HD problem

[ankara halla]

Hi,

as I explained in another thread of mine, I am having a problem accessing one of my hard drives.

First, here's my setup:
Asus A7N8X-X mobo (nForce3 chipset) with Athlon64 3000+, 1 GB of Ram
nVidia GeForce 6600GT display adapter (connected to a Acer AL1914 monitor and a TV via svideo)
a 30 GB WDC Ide drive (NTFS win2k)
an 80 GB WDC ide drive (home to kubuntu 8.04.1 live-cd installation)
a 160 GB ST sata drive (NTFS for data)
a 300 GB Maxtor ide drive (NTFS for data)

...and a bunch of miscallanious other devices.

The problem is I can't access my maxtor in dolphin (or konqueror). The 300gig drive is formatted as NTFS and shows under Disk Managment in win2k as two partitions (128,00 GB and 151,48 GB) but is accessible as a single G: drive in explorer (and where ever...). I can access both of my other NTFS hd's in dolphin (though I at first need to type in my passwd, kinda irritating. After every boot the system says something like "system policy prevents mounting internal media" and then asks for the passwd. Any help here on how to change system policy?). However, what can I do to be able to access the Maxtor? It's home to all of my media.

As for your HD problem could you post your /etc/fstab file?

Open up dolphin.
Navigate to base folder and open /etc then find fstab (text file) and open that with kate (text editor)

It may give us insight in the way your system is treating partitions / drives.

I would also suggest posting a separate thread for that.

I can't help you much on that.

Okay, separate thread done. Here's what fstab says:

file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sdb1
UUID=43f3840c-2f59-4e5b-a75b-6fa4347c957b / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sdb5
UUID=c3a14530-4d80-4f87-b481-49e2963107f7 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/scd1 /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

Thanks in advance for any help, it's much needed


-ankara halla

[ankara halla]

Re: HD problem

No love?

[dibl]

Re: HD problem

The 300gig drive is formatted as NTFS and shows under Disk Managment in win2k as two partitions (128,00 GB and 151,48 GB) but is accessible as a single G: drive in explorer (and where ever...).

This tells me there is something unorthodox about the partitioning on that disk --

I like the GParted Live CD to look at hard drives and figure out how they are partitioned, where the boot flag is set, etc. etc. You can download the ISO from this site, and then burn yourself a GParted Live CD:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php

[ankara halla]

Re: HD problem

Now this is all from memory so might not be 100% accurate, but back in the day I bought it, win2k was only able to recognize it to 130 GB (...or thereabouts, the NTFS limit of the time or something). I needed to install MaxBlast from Seagate to get windows to recognize it as a 300 GB drive and then voila, it worked as expected.

As is the case with windows however, every now and then a complete re-install is actually less work than working out the kinks in the system. I've done a few since I formatted the drive and I haven't needed to install MaxBlast to get it to work ever since, nvidia's latests nForce drivers have been enough. It has shown as unformatted initially, but after the nForce drivers are installed, it's all good.

This lead me to belive, that whatever MaxBlast did wasn't too unorthodox, since a 3rd party driver in win2k also recognized it, but once I have a bit of time to get into it, I'll definitely take a look at GParted and at what it has to say.

Thanks for the help!

[dibl]

Re: HD problem

I needed to install MaxBlast from Seagate to get windows to recognize it as a 300 GB drive and then voila, it worked as expected.

Yep, probably installed a driver for Windows. Which of course doesn't help Linux. :P

Also, I wonder if your BIOS recognizes the native drive configuration, or does some "translation" of it -- they used to do that to cope with larger drives.

Anyway, I'm back to recommending a GParted Live CD, plus check and see whether there is an upgrade available for your BIOS.

[ankara halla]

Re: HD problem

Hmm, excellent point there... the thing is I've allready done the BIOS update not too long ago (when I got my Samsung sata DVD-burner, this spring actually) and at that time the latest update was allready somewhat old, so I don't think there's anything newer, but I'll take a look.

However, it has been since after my BIOS update that I recall discovering the lack of need for MaxBlast, so it's very possible the BIOS update also fixed a problem with the hd along with my problem with the DVD-burner (which initially simply froze my BIOS up at boot). Even so, I still need to install the nForce drivers to be able to access the drive in win2k, so it's not just the BIOS though it might be a part of it.

Anyway, I'll be busy the next few days, but as soon as I get the time I'll take a peek at my BIOS and at Gparted (the download is allready underway...) and will come back with the results.

Thanks a lot for your help!

[dibl]

Re: HD problem

You're welcome, and good luck with it!

[ankara halla]

Re: HD problem

Back again!

Anyway, GParted sees both partitions, correctly identifies the first one as NTFS, but lists the second one as unknown.

As to BIOS updates, as I suspected, I allready have the latest available stable version.

[ankara halla]

Re: HD problem

Hmm, no quick and easy fix it seems from the lack of replies... that's okay, I've got most of it (the important parts) backed up anyway, so I might as well do a complete re-format.

The next question is, what's the preferred method in kubuntu? I allready have the GParted bootdisk, but it would seem easyer and more practical to simply install in to my HD direct. I assume I can find it in the repositories? and if not I can install it thru other means (I'll come to that if I can't manage it).

But even so, there surely is a partition managing program in kubuntu natively? I allready discovered I can't format a drive in dolphin the same way I can in explorer in windows. What's the best way to go about formatting a 300 GB sata drive in kubuntu?

As allways, thanks in advance.

[dibl]

Re: HD problem

If you have a GParted Live CD, then that is the best method, IMO, to take care of preparing the hard drive for Linux installation.

So, you have a partition with a "not recognized" format? Actually, you will need to make a third partition, say 1GB, for the swap space. So format the larger one ext3, and the small one as "linux swap" and you can be done with GParted.

Then boot your Kubuntu installation CD, either the Live CD or the Alternate Install (my favorite), and proceed to install on the partition that you made ext3. It will find the swap partition by itself. It should be just about that easy.

[ankara halla]

Re: HD problem

Umm, I allready have kubuntu up and running nicely on my 80 GB HD, surely there is no need to install it again to simply gain access to another drive for some extra space?

I mean, my 160 GB drive works just fine with a Windows formatted NTFS (other than the "system policy prevents mounting internal media => enter passwd" after every boot, any way to get rid of that?)

Also, from what I've understood, swap space is only needed for the actual linux installation? I'm not looking to install anything on the Maxtor, simply to double my HD capacity I can use in kubuntu.

Anyway, thanks for your help. I might try a simple repartitioning and format from the GParted Live CD (no swap or nothing), that ought to work, right?

[dibl]

Re: HD problem

Oh, sorry, I thought you were having a problem installing Kubuntu on that hard drive. My mistake.

I would say just use GParted to format the unused partition as ext3 format.

Then edit /etc/fstab to mount it automatically, assuming that is what you want. Use "mount by UUID". To find the UUID of your newly formatted partition, first identify which partition it is with

fdisk -lu

and then issue

sudo blkid

and observe the UUID number that is associated with that partition. Use that to identify it in the fstab boot line that you add. Make it look like this (using your own UUID and mount point, of course, not mine):

UUID=1a1ffa9b-a8f6-43e9-bb1f-fbc32934018b   /media/disk_2 ext3   auto,users,rw,exec,noatime   0  2

[ankara halla]

Re: HD problem

There are no "unused" partitions on the Maxtor, in win2k the baby works fine at full capacity. There is simply an "unknown" partition on the drive according to GParted. Now this is very likely duo to the MaxBlast format I did back in the day (even in win2k I need to install drivers for nForce before I can access it, otherwise win2k sees the drive as "unformatted").

Also, while kubuntu sees the drive (there's an icon for it in both konqueror and dolphion), I can't access it all and anyway, I'd prefer it as a single partition.

I've allready inculded my fstab information in my first post, but I don't know what to make of it. Simply put, am I to expect a problem if I were to repartition the drive and format it as a single partition with the GParted live-cd? As is, kubuntu can see the drive, but can't access it. Would a re-partitioning and -formatting change something in the way linux/kubuntu handles hard drives? I know in windows it wouldn't be a problem, but I'm very, very new to the wonderful world of linux and have very little idea how thinks work here.

[dibl]

Re: HD problem

Simply put, am I to expect a problem if I were to repartition the drive and format it as a single partition with the GParted live-cd? As is, kubuntu can see the drive, but can't access it. Would a re-partitioning and -formatting change something in the way linux/kubuntu handles hard drives?

I don't know of any reason why there should be a problem if you use GParted to delete all existing partitions, and then create a single partition on the entire drive, and format it ext3. Then all you should need to do is put the line in /etc/fstab and make the mount point in /media and mount it.

I assume you've copied off all the data somewhere safe -- it will be an empty drive when you finish the project.

[ankara halla]

Re: HD problem

Yes, as I said before, I have all the important stuff backed up.

One more thing, from my fstab file up there in the first post, what's the line I should be looking for? I can't make out much of the information there.

From what I've understood, the fstab shows all ide and sata drives, but not USB devices?
ATM, in the category of ide and sata, I have:

a 30 GB ide drive
an 80 GB ide drive
a 160 GB sata drive
a 300 GB ide drive (a few posts back I said it was a sata, it's not, it's an ide as I said in my original post, though this isn't likely to make a difference?)

an ide cd-burner
a sata dvd-burner


I can easily enough identify the -rom's (.../cdrom0, for example, is a pretty big give away... .. .), but how do I know what is what in the HD section? Do I need to go look at my BIOS to see what is cabled to what and in what order or something? That would seriously be a pain in the buttocks compared to how easy a windows re-format would be.... and regarding that, if I boot into windows, re-format the drive in there as a single partition (I should be able to do that), would kubuntu be okay with that? Okay, NTFS is not as good a system as ext3 is, but I'd be able to live with that.