[SOLVED] no hard drives to install to

[talz13]

First, I have done a lot of searching, and have tried the "all-generic-ide" pci=nommconf, and irqpoll options on boot.

I tried hiren's bootcd this morning and everything in there could see my drive perfectly fine. I went ahead and made an ext3 partition on the drive, but it still couldn't see it in the ubuntu installer, which leads be to believe it's just a problem with the linux distros that I've tried, and not an issue with the drive itself

Also tried openSUSE 10.3, same problem.

When I let it boot normally, it gives me errors of:
ata3: port is slow to respond, please be patient (Status 0xd0)and GParted doesn't see the drive either, telling me:
No devices detectedI get an error message of
SRST failed (errorno=-16)when I try to boot with the additional boot options...


My system:
Asus A8V motherboard
120gb WD PATA drive
nvidia 6800gt
2gb ddr400
athlon x2 4200+ s939

Tried:
ubuntu 8.04 amd64
ubuntu 8.04 32bit
ubuntu 8.04 32bit alternative
openSUSE 10.3 amd64

[tamoneya]

what does this command output:
sudo fdisk -l

[talz13]

what does this command output:
sudo fdisk -l

Nothing, just returns to the prompt.

[tamoneya]

is your bios able to detect the drives?

[chinobar]

Had the exact same problem, bios saw the drives while the installation didn't.
The workaround was using all the 3 bootup commands you mentioned in the first post at the same time, at least i could see my drives then.
Now i'm stuck with Errno 5 :-P

[Pumalite]

http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/p15.htm#5_

[talz13]

[url]http://users .bigpond.net.au /hermanzone/p15.htm#5_[ /url]

I haven't gotten to the point where it will actually detect that there is a hard drive present yet. fdisk doesn't show anything because there is nothing to show. There are no disks labeled /dev/hdX or /dev/sdX.

I tried those thee commands before without success. where do they need to be on the boot line? I put them after the '--' at the end of the line. I realize they have helped a number of people, but I'm not sure I it's the same situation as mine since they didn't seem to do anything.

Oh, and the drive is detected in the bios every boot, and has been recognized in various other programs like partition magic.

[cdtech]

my bad.

how about df -H

[cdtech]

Had the exact same problem, bios saw the drives while the installation didn't.
The workaround was using all the 3 bootup commands you mentioned in the first post at the same time, at least i could see my drives then.
Now i'm stuck with Errno 5 :-P

What's Errno 5? :confused:

[chinobar]

What's Errno 5? :confused:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=600126 :)

[VMC]

If you boot up with a minicd (knoppix,puppy, slax, etc) and type the command 'fdisk -l' you should get some output showing partitions.

[talz13]

If you boot up with a minicd (knoppix,puppy, slax, etc) and type the command 'fdisk -l' you should get some output showing partitions.

I'll try that tonight. Hopefully something besides windows will detect my disks!

[talz13]

I'm running knoppix 5.1 right now, and
sudo fdisk -l produces
knoppix@Knoppix:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 14593 117218241 83 Linux so the drive is definitely there, just can't be seen by ubuntu or suse...

[Pumalite]

Go into BIOS and change the IDE Configuration until you hit the right one.

[talz13]

Go into BIOS and change the IDE Configuration until you hit the right one.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, there aren't really any IDE settings to change. Unless you mean defining the drive manually instead of auto (cylinders, heads, etc.)...

And still, why would everything except Ubuntu and suse be able to see it perfectly?

[Pumalite]

What BIOS and what motherboard do you have?

[talz13]

My system:
Asus A8V motherboard
120gb WD PATA drive
nvidia 6800gt
2gb ddr400
athlon x2 4200+ s939

Bios 0219, nothing special about the new releases, but I might dig up a floppy drive to flash sometime if all else fails.

[Pumalite]

Are you able to access your BIOS? Can you tell me how is your hard drive configured?

[talz13]

Are you able to access your BIOS? Can you tell me how is your hard drive configured?

Ok, every setting under the primary master is auto (type, LBA, block mode, pio mode, dma mode, smart monitoring) except for 32bit data transfer.

The configured settings shown above that are:

Device: Hard Disk
Vendor: WDC WD1200JB-00DUA3
Size: 120.0GB
LBA Mode: Supported
Block mode: 16 sectors
PIO Mode: 4
Async DMA: MultiWord DMA-
Ultra DMA: Ultra DMA-5
SMART Monitoring: Supported

[Pumalite]

Maybe this helps:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=332939

[talz13]

I may have a solution that I'll have to try when I get home, but here it is:

I have a WD hard drive, and apparently they have different jumper settings from other drives. The "Master" jumper that I probably have it on is the setting if you have a master AND A SLAVE drive attached on that channel. Since I do not, it's causing problems.

I need to try switching it to "Master, single drive" or cable select and see if it solves my problem.

I will post back if this fixes my problem or not.

[talz13]

Yahoo! The jumper setting fixed my problem. It WAS set on master, but apparently that was wrong. Moved it to cable select and all my problems are gone!