Booting 11.04 from live usb - system does not see hard drive

[vtanase]

Hello,

I have a dual boot machine with WinXP/Linux Mint on it. I am looking to erase both of them and put up Ubuntu 11.04.

I have chosen to go with a live USB install for this. The live USB boots fine and everything seems usable. However, when I tried to install it would tell me that I do not have 4GB available for the install which seemed a bit weird since I have a 160GB Maxtor HDD.

After digging around a bit I realized that the system does not see my hard drive. Running fdisk -l would only show the USB drive that I am booting from and not the main HDD.

I tried to have a look in /dev to see if my HDD is there and not mounted. But aside from sda which is the USB I did not find an sdb or hd entry.

Has anyone encountered a similar problem while trying to install Ubuntu 11.04? Can anyone provide some suggestions to be able to solve this?

Thanks in advance.
Vlad

P.S.: The HDD works fine, I can see it in BIOS and in the other 2 OS-es that I have installed.

[lmarmisa]

Welcome to the forums.

Please, open a terminal, type this command and post here the results:



sudo lshw -class storage -class disk

[vtanase]

This is the output I get:



ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo lshw -class storage -class disk
*-ide UNCLAIMED
description: IDE interface
product: VIA Technologies, Inc.
vendor: VIA Technologies, Inc.
physical id: f
bus info: pci@0000:00:0f.0
version: 07
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: ide pm cap_list
configuration: latency=32
resources: ioport:1f0(size=8) ioport:3f6 ioport:170(size=8) ioport:376 ioport:fc00(size=16)
*-scsi
physical id: 3
bus info: usb@1:2
logical name: scsi0
capabilities: emulated scsi-host
configuration: driver=usb-storage
*-disk
description: SCSI Disk
product: Cruzer Micro
vendor: SanDisk
physical id: 0.0.0
bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/sda
version: 6.51
serial: u
size: 1909MiB (2002MB)
capabilities: removable
*-medium
physical id: 0
logical name: /dev/sda
size: 1909MiB (2002MB)
capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
configuration: signature=49ebc834

[lmarmisa]

This is the output I get:



ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo lshw -class storage -class disk
*-ide UNCLAIMED
description: IDE interface
product: VIA Technologies, Inc.
vendor: VIA Technologies, Inc.
physical id: f
bus info: pci@0000:00:0f.0
version: 07
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: ide pm cap_list
configuration: latency=32
resources: ioport:1f0(size=8) ioport:3f6 ioport:170(size=8) ioport:376 ioport:fc00(size=16)
*-scsi
physical id: 3
bus info: usb@1:2
logical name: scsi0
capabilities: emulated scsi-host
configuration: driver=usb-storage
*-disk
description: SCSI Disk
product: Cruzer Micro
vendor: SanDisk
physical id: 0.0.0
bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/sda
version: 6.51
serial: u
size: 1909MiB (2002MB)
capabilities: removable
*-medium
physical id: 0
logical name: /dev/sda
size: 1909MiB (2002MB)
capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
configuration: signature=49ebc834


The Via Tech IDE/SATA controller of your motherboard is not supported by the Ubuntu 11.04 installer. This is the reason because your HDD is not detected.

[vtanase]

The Via Tech IDE/SATA controller of your motherboard is not supported by the Ubuntu 11.04 installer. This is the reason because your HDD is not detected.

Thanks for your timely reply. This seems quite plausible. Is there anything I can do to be able to move on with the installation, or should I just give up on this and try again with the next version?

[lmarmisa]

Thanks for your timely reply. This seems quite plausible. Is there anything I can do to be able to move on with the installation, or should I just give up on this and try again with the next version?

According to my experience, Ubuntu and Via Tech do not match very well. I got many problems with Ubuntu and a couple of Via Tech motherboards some time ago. Maybe the Ubuntu Alternate CD could give you a solution. I do not know.

[wendelliam]

I am having a similar problem. I boot from the USB installer and the only option I see is to install into a new partition on my 2TB HD. I have two other HDs in my system, including one with a partition I made for Ubuntu in Windows 7, but Ubuntu does not present these as install destination options.I ran the command you suggested above and got this output. Any help is much appreciated



ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo lshw -class storage -class disk
PCI (sysfs)
*-ide UNCLAIMED
description: IDE interface
product: Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
vendor: Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:09:00.0
version: 12
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: ide pm msi pciexpress cap_list
configuration: latency=0
resources: ioport:dc00(size=8) ioport:d880(size=4) ioport:d800(size=8) ioport:d480(size=4) ioport:d400(size=16) memory:f7eff800-f7efffff memory:f7ee0000-f7eeffff
*-storage
description: SATA controller
product: JMB362/JMB363 Serial ATA Controller
vendor: JMicron Technology Corp.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
version: 03
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: storage pm pciexpress ahci_1.0 bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=ahci latency=0
resources: irq:18 memory:f7afe000-f7afffff
*-ide
description: IDE interface
product: JMB362/JMB363 Serial ATA Controller
vendor: JMicron Technology Corp.
physical id: 0.1
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.1
version: 03
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: ide pm bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=pata_jmicron latency=0
resources: irq:19 ioport:bc00(size=8) ioport:b880(size=4) ioport:b800(size=8) ioport:b480(size=4) ioport:b400(size=16)
*-ide:0
description: IDE interface
product: 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 4 port SATA IDE Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1f.2
bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.2
logical name: scsi0
logical name: scsi1
version: 06
width: 32 bits
clock: 66MHz
capabilities: ide pm bus_master cap_list emulated
configuration: driver=ata_piix latency=0
resources: irq:21 ioport:8c00(size=8) ioport:8880(size=4) ioport:8800(size=8) ioport:8480(size=4) ioport:8400(size=16) ioport:8080(size=16)
*-disk
description: ATA Disk
product: WDC WD20EARS-00M
vendor: Western Digital
physical id: 0
bus info: scsi@0:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/sda
version: 51.0
serial: WD-WMAZA1833553
size: 1863GiB (2TB)
capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
configuration: ansiversion=5 signature=fec4441d
*-cdrom
description: DVD-RAM writer
product: iHAS424 B
vendor: ATAPI
physical id: 1
bus info: scsi@1:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/cdrom
logical name: /dev/cdrw
logical name: /dev/dvd
logical name: /dev/dvdrw
logical name: /dev/scd0
logical name: /dev/sr0
version: GL15
capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd dvd-r dvd-ram
configuration: ansiversion=5 status=nodisc
*-ide:1
description: IDE interface
product: 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 2 port SATA IDE Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1f.5
bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.5
version: 06
width: 32 bits
clock: 66MHz
capabilities: ide pm bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=ata_piix latency=0
resources: irq:21 ioport:9c00(size=8) ioport:9880(size=4) ioport:9800(size=8) ioport:9480(size=4) ioport:9400(size=16) ioport:9080(size=16)
*-scsi
physical id: 5
bus info: usb@1:1.3
logical name: scsi6
capabilities: emulated scsi-host
configuration: driver=usb-storage
*-disk
description: SCSI Disk
physical id: 0.0.0
bus info: scsi@6:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/sdb
size: 14GiB (15GB)
capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
configuration: signature=c3072e18