14.04.1 USB Installation doesn't see hard drives

[penitent ocelot]

Hi,
I'm trying to install 14.04.1 onto a Sony Vaio T Series SVT13112FXS, but everytime I try I get to the installation type screen and it doesn't seem to recognize my hard drive; it doesn't show anything (picture attached). I've tried re-burning the live usb as suggested elsewhere, but I'm still running into the same problem. Any ideas?

[MAFoElffen]

Go into your bios settings and see what the SATA mode is: IDE or AHCI (Should be set to AHCI)

When booting, During BIOS Messages, press <Cntrl><I><R>, which will put your into the Intel chip RAID menu, where that should be toggled off. (it's just fakeraid)

While in the LiveCD Image, start a terminal and post the results of


fdisk -l

Which should output results from your hard disk... What I'm looking for is info if it sees it, or part of it as a dmraid member. The Intel Fakeraid on that will put a marker on the drive, which when seen by the partitioner, will think it's still a dmraid meber and skip it. If suspect, then


mdadm -E /dev/sdX

Where X is the drive ID, would return what kind of superblock is there. If "90", then


mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sdX

If other than that and fdisk id's it as a RAID member, there's another way to do that with the older dmraid


dmraid -E -r /dev/sdX

[penitent ocelot]

So the bios settings on the laptop are extremely limited; there's no option showing the SATA setting. Same with the RAID; <Ctrl><r><l> doesn't get me into the RAID menu, although according to this (http://community.sony.com/t5/VAIO-Hardware-Networking/Sony-Vaio-T-series-Install-different-OS/td-p/27515/page/2) Sony forum post the Vaio model I have doesn't have a RAID configuration.

When in the LiveCD image, the fdisk -l command doesn't show any output.

[MAFoElffen]

I'm at a loss then. For fdisk -l to have no output at all, there would also be no media present that it would have booted from.... such as the bootable LiveUSB device and it's own virtual live image loop device.

I downloaded your User Guide and you are right, the user is pretty much locked out from changing anything in BIOS.

[penitent ocelot]

I just tried sudo fdisk -l, and that worked. Here's the output:



Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa252c714

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 27938815 13968384 27 Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sda2 *27938816 28655615 358400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 28655616 662199299 316771842 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Disk /dev/sdb: 32.0 GB, 32017047552 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3892 cylinders, total 62533296 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x7f26fe7e

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 2048 23519231 11758592 84 OS/2 hidden C: drive

Disk /dev/sdc: 15.6 GB, 15606349824 bytes
116 heads, 52 sectors/track, 5053 cylinders, total 30481152 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc3072e18

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 8064 30481151 15236544 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

[MAFoElffen]

So there I see your 500GB Sata and a 32GB SSD drive... So does Gparted see these while in the LiveUSB?

[penitent ocelot]

Gparted doesn't see the 32 GB drive, but it does see the 500GB drive with all of the partitions (I attached a picture).

[ubfan1]

Try clicking on the device list in the upper right corner, do you see the other disk? Select it and you should see the partition info.

[penitent ocelot]

Ya, it looks like Gparted does see the other disks, I just missed the device list initially.