Can't seem to get second SATA Hard Drive working

[gehentogo]

Hello, and thanks for a great forum.

Sorry if this problem has already been addressed, but I can't seem to find anything that will help.

I am running Kubuntu 7.04. have the following relevant hardware:

Mach Speed MK8-939A motherboard
WDC WD2500KS-00M, SATA hard drives (qty. - 2)
NEC DVD RW ND-3550A
Optiarc DVD RW AD-7170A
LG GCR-8523B CD-ROM Drive
1GB RAM

I have been running Kubuntu for a couple weeks with great success. But I just got a second SATA hard drive, same make and model as the first and can't get it to work.

Here's what I know so far:

both drives and cables are good -- the new drive has nothing on it. I was just able to see them both in the BIOS, they are both set as MASTERs. Is this right?

Anyway, when I start up, the OS hangs up on the KUBUNTU splash screen, and the little blue status bar freezes up at the very beginning and doesn't do anything.

I can start KUBUNTU fine if I disconnect the new HD.

What do I need to do to get it working?

Thanks for your help.

[Sequent]

Re: Can't seem to get second SATA Hard Drive working

Setting both drives as masters is ok if they are on different channels (check in BIOS setup for this), they probably are or the machine would likely hang up before Kubuntu even started to boot. How long do you wait before rebooting? It could be that it hasn't hung up but is looking for filesystem and is trying every available option because it can't find one.

[eriefisher]

Re: Can't seem to get second SATA Hard Drive working

Have you formatted the disk? This might help, it sounds like Kubuntu is confused. I would suggest partition logic.

http://partitionlogic.org.uk/

[dibl]

Re: Can't seem to get second SATA Hard Drive working

eriefisher is probably on the right track. I personally like the GParted live CD for this purpose (get from sourceforge).

It also may be that NEITHER should be set as master, in BIOS. It also may be that they both have the "bootable" flag set, thereby confusing the OS. Using Qtparted or GParted, make sure there is only one partition bootable. I have a pair of the WD-150s on my system -- they are great drives.

HTH

[gehentogo]

Re: Can't seem to get second SATA Hard Drive working

Thanks for the tip. I downloaded GParted, and will try it out tomorrow and let you know what happens.

I am not sure how to change the master/slave settings for these HD's in the BIOS. Hopefully I won't have to mess with it.

[gehentogo]

Re: Can't seem to get second SATA Hard Drive working

OK, still not working.

Here is what I have done:

I tried both the GParted and Partition Logic CDs, and neither would boot up. In both cases the system hangs before the GUI starts working.

I tried just waiting to see what Kubuntu does after it hangs. Surprisingly it finally did something. A bunch of text appeared on the screen, there was some message about something not responding, and would try it again. I let it do that for about 45 minutes or so, and it didn't do anything else. Just kept trying, and finding out it was slow. I wish I could post the text of the message here, but I don't remember it (too frustrated to write it down).

Next I booted with the KNOPPIX 5.1.1 DVD. It started to hang, too, but I was tired of it not working so I started sharpening my woodworking tools. Then, after about 20 minutes, KNOPPIX booted up. Surprise! I was excited about this because KNOPPIX comes with GParted, and I thought I could format the drive through that.

So, when I started GParted up, it saw both of the hard drives, one of which was unformatted. So, I started to format it. First, it wanted me to create a Disklabel. I am a bit out of my element here, and didn't know what to do, so I let it pick the default, which is some kind of dos disklabel.

No luck, GParted wouldn't touch it. It gave me a message that said something like "not able to comply" or whatever, anyway it wouldn't do it. I was crushed, having come the closest yet.

So then it got me to thinking and experimenting. When only my old drive is plugged in, everything works perfectly. When both are plugged it, it hangs up in the bios for a while before it finally boots to the splash screen (then it hangs with the Kubuntu status bar). If only my new HD is plugged it, it hangs in the bios where it is trying to read the ATA drives, and will not continue.

I thought that I could perhaps get the disklabel by installing an operating system. I have an old OpenSUSE disk, and so I tried to boot it up with that. I guess I started getting desperate here, because I let the machine get past the BIOS with both drives plugged in, and then unplugged my old drive. SUSE stopped the installation after a while because it couldn't find a hard drive to install to. I even tried this with an old Windows XP disc, with the same result (thought it would be ironic if I could fix Linux with Windows).

Anyway, I must not have done any permanent damage to my computer yet, because it still is working with only the old drive.

So, what is next? I am out of ideas. How do I set a disklabel, and also, is there a way to check if this hard disk is even OK or not? It is recognized in the BIOS when they are both plugged in.

[Sequent]

Re: Can't seem to get second SATA Hard Drive working

Did you check the BIOS setup yet? It's safe to check all the various settings in there because there is always an option to exit without saving changes, so if you accidently change something you can just reboot and start again. There will be a section in there telling you what drives are attached. If you had 2 IDE drives on the same controller set as master the system would hang up during the POST checks but I'm not sure about SATA drives. Try unplugging one drive then the other, checking the BIOS in between. Just remember to switch off first, plugging and unplugging drives on a live system isn't a good idea.