Hardy Heron Can't See IDE Drive

[jvaughn]

I am having a problem trying to install 8.04 on my custom built media center. I am would like to utilize dual booting, and Windows XP Home works fine. But when I try to install 8.04, it gets to the partition page and there is no info present. I checked the system info, under the Advanced tab in the GUI, it shows 4 removable USB controller's (which I am assuming to be the SATA ports on my mobo), the CD drive, and System, but my WD IDE (PATA)40GB hard drive is no where to be found. I have already disabled the SATA drives in the BIOS. I have not tried gparted yet. I also switched the IDE cable on the mobo to have the HDD on the primary controller and the CD drive on the secondary, and still nothing. I even tried my copy of 7.10, which booted into ash. Linux newbie, so be gentle, please, and thanks!

Hardware:

Ahanix media center PC case w/ 7" touch screen
Mach Speed Mobo
AMD Athalon 64 3800+
Western Digital 40GB PATA drive w/ 3 FAT32 partitions (Windows, Blank, Data)
Buffalo wireless card
WinFast TV Tuner card
nVidia 8500GT graphics card

[dibl]

Re: Hardy Heron Can't See IDE Drive

I have seen prior reports of a similar problem -- I don't know exactly what has changed in 8.04 to cause it.

Here are a few ideas to try:

1. On the drive itself, make sure it is jumpered to "CS" or "Cable Select".

2. In BIOS, you might have IDE channel choices -- probably you should set that drive as "Master" on IDE Channel 1.

3. Also in BIOS, there might be choices of IDE "modes" -- try "legacy" or whatever it's not set to at the moment.

4. Try pulling the power plugs off the SATA drives, and then see if the IDE drive appears. If so, install Kubuntu that way. Install Grub on the MBR of that drive, and then you'll have to edit the boot menu to chainload Win XP.

That's what I can think of at the moment. Good luck with it.

[jvaughn]

Re: Hardy Heron Can't See IDE Drive

Cool. thanks for the advice. However, it brings up more questions.

1 and 2) The drive is set to Master, and is plugged into the middle IDE plug on the cable. My BIOS does show the IDE WD 40GB HDD as the master on channel 0. I am assuming this is where it should be.

Also on this note, when I first assembled this PC, I had the HDD as the master on channel 1, so I switched it with the CD drive (thinking that Linux needs to be on the first HDD). No effect.

3) In my BIOS, or Access mode, I have the following options:

CHS
LBA
Large
Auto

Auto is selected by default. Should I manually change this, and if so, to which one?

4) I only have the one IDE drive, no SATA drives.

Hope this helps!