Installer not seeing hard drive

[jfg69]

OK, so I decided to see if I could get 2.1 onto my old Dell notebook. I had bought one of those IDE/Sata to usb adaptors, and after finally getting it to work, I was unable to install directly to the laptop due to lack of USB boot up support.
Plan B.. removed HDD from laptop, pseudo-usb drive hooked to PC, fired PC up with 2.1 LiveDVD. The HDD (which I previously formatted a partition for the install) is even automounted, awesome! This should be easy, right?

Um.. no.. the installer (or the partition editor) does NOT see that particular drive or partition..

Can I get the partition recognized.. I cant see why its not if its mounted and available....

Code: Select all

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls /dev/sd*
/dev/sda   /dev/sda4  /dev/sdb1  /dev/sdb3  /dev/sdc   /dev/sdc2
/dev/sda3  /dev/sdb   /dev/sdb2  /dev/sdb4  /dev/sdc1  /dev/sdc3
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$


/dev/sdc is the actual HDD in question.. partiton editor doesnt show it on the list, only the other 2 sata drives..

[pch.shot]

Hard drives and the bios are quirky things. Try unplugging the hard drive and plugging it back in(try another cable as well). Then go into your bios and make sure it is detecting it. If it was running Windows before that won't really help because Windows is not good at detecting failing hardware. Linux is a lot more susceptible to faulty crap.

[jfg69]

well, what I really dont get is that, the hard drive is BEING seen.. I was actually able to open and view files from the laptop hard drive.. yet it is not seen by the partition editor.. meanwhile, I had it mounted, unmounted, re-mounted etc, and no problems accessing the drive as a normal drive.. is this maybe an issue with USB since that is how the adapter works?

[jfg69]

I know that if a usb drive is mounted while trying to install, the installer will not see it or install to it because it needs to be unmounted for the installer to access it.

I thought of that too... so what I did was just go to the menu and right click and unmount the partition I was installing to on the drive. No luck on that either. I guess I'll have to try and unmount the whole drive, but that seems like its counter productive, how's it going to see the damn drive if its not mounted?

[pch.shot]

Time to edit fstab I guess!!!

[jfg69]

OK, well... I went back to square one- I reloaded the 2.1 x86 DVD, shut down the PC, reconnected the laptops 2.5HDD via the SATA/IDE to USB adapter and fired up the PC.

Everything went well so far (as did previously) the 2.5HDD automounted just like before. I went and right clicked and unmounted the Linux partition I had prepared, and also right clicked and unmounted the remaining partition.. (the WinXP partition that still has info on it that I want to keep.)
I clicked the install, and proceeded thru the steps. When I got to the partition editor, like magic, there it was.. my SDC1 partition and (the rest of the 2.5HDD) were there in the editor.

Install seems to have gone smoothly, I'll know later on when I get back from work. What I did notice when re-booting is that my damn grub is all F*&%$ up again.. friggin' installer, wtf?

I'll report back on the results of the actuall install when I fire up the laptop to close off this post when I'm done.

[jfg69]

See I knew ya could do it. What you needed to do was change your bios to boot from the drive that you are going to install to before you install to it. I have also had this problem before and was solved once I chose that drive to boot from before install.

Only problem with that was I needed the thing to boot from the DVD drive so I could run the Live version to install on the 2.5HDD from the laptop, which was tapped in via USB and adapter.
When I get home later, I'll see if I have time to drop the drive back inand fire it up.

[pch.shot]

I must admit, I really do hate hard drives. I ripped the Spinpoint pata one out of my PIII and now I use it to transfer stuff(I have one of those crappy usb enclosures). I leave the Puppy Linux cd in it so now I don't need no stinken hard drive at all. I boot it up, set up the ethernet, modprobe the old sound chip and I'm ready to go. In less than 5 minutes I'm on the internet listening to tunes with no installation errors!!! I have flash support and everything that most people would want. It loads completely into ram so it is extremely fast. At 90 megs you can't beat it!!! One day soon, that will be all I'll use!!!

[jfg69]

Heres the latest:
The GRUB on my PC= borked, apparently the install updated MY grub on the PC.. as opposed to adding a NEW grub to the new install on the 2.5HDD.
And likewise, the laptop does NOT boot into 'nix, because there is no f%^&* grub...
SO... SGD rescues my PC, now I will have to pull the HD out of the laptop and plug it back in to the PC and run SGD to install a grub on IT...

Stay tuned...