fdisk says "no fixed disks present "

[fshanda]

I put together a system for me and my son to start playing around with Linux on. I have everything installed and the computer posts normaly. I can boot from the flopy but can not fdisk the drive to setup my partitions. All i recieve at the "a" prompt after typing fdisk is "no fixed disk present". I am using an IBM deskstar 20.5gb harddrive. Does it require special formating software? OEM drive. I have set it to device 0 master for 16 and 15 heads also tried cable select with the same results. Im using an 80 conductor cable and checked the connections. It is also the only device on the ide channel. The drive does power up and is spinning. Im stuck and dont know what to do next.


System:
Celeron 300a
Pc Chips M726MRT /onboard sound and modem
IBM Deskstar 20.5gb 7200rpm ide hard drive
Savage 4agp video
AT power supply 250 amps
64mb pc133 ram
cdrom
floppy

Fshanda

[biglaker]

fshanda:
There are a couple of things that you did not mention that I will cover just to make sure they are done:
1. First - make sure that you have the red edge of your ribbon cable aligned to pin 1 on both the controller end and the drive end of the cable.
2. Since your drive is the only drive on your IDE port, the position of the jumper on the drive may not matter but check your documentation to make sure it is positioned appropriate for a single drive installation.
3. After you have turned the computer on, go into your bios. The method of getting into your bios should be depicted on your screen when you first start the computer up.
Some computers just require pressing the delete key to go into the bios.
4. Use the auto detect feature within the bios to detect the drive. After the drive is detected, you will normally exit the bios saving the new settings. You should then be able to use fdisk. Hope this helps.
Dave

[fshanda]

I checked the cables the first time I tried it, I was using a 40 conductor cable and thought that was the problem. Then switched to the ata66 cable. The ata66 cable is keyed so its set right. The blue connector is connected to the board. Also checked it against the MB manual. It all looks good. I will try auto detect but I thought the disk had to be partitioned first before it could be detected. I will give it a try. I will also look on IBM's site for some documentation on this drive. I bought it bare.

Fshanda

[S.D.Willie]

sounds like one of two things.
check your bios settings. if you have the drive on its own cable, make sure you have it set to auto detect as mentioned, but also make sure you have that ide channel enabled. maybe somehow it was or got disabled?? you dont have to partition a drive b4 it auto detects. if all your connections are right than you either have something set wrong in setup, or you have a D.O.A. drive. good luck.

SD

ps. remember, red stripe on ribbon cable always goes toward power cord on your hard drives and cdroms.

[This message has been edited by S.D.Willie (edited 05-20-2001).]

[Clayton]

Hi

I was just wondering wether it may be related to Linux File allocation. I'm not certain but does Linux use a proprietory file allocation table? Perhaps fdisk is restricted to FAT32.

Just a thought, good luck.

[fshanda]

Just had to auto detect. Thanks for the replies. I thought I had all of this figured out but still learning I guess. I havent started on the Linux install I need to do a little more reading. I did get Mandrake 8.0 yesterday but need to read up on setting up a dual boot system with Linux as the second system. Wish me luck.

Fshanda