Hardware

Hi guys.

I realize it's a 7-year-old drive, but is there any reason why it's not listed it when I try to install Mint?

All my other drives are recognized:



Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks! ~ Bamm

It probably has more to do with the drive controller than the drive itself. Perhaps a newer SATA-2 or SATA-3 controller throwing a wobbly when trying to talk to a SATA-1 drive?

Or maybe the drive's not showing up because of RAID configuration options in your CMOS or some such. Or Linux might not have a driver for that controller(unlikely, if the board's at all modern. AHCI should cover nearly anything.)

Or it might be a model Linux blacklisted(sometimes happens to drives with especially severe problems). I'd ask you for the dmesg but given you're stuck in a graphical installer I don't see how to get any useful error messages. Could you boot a gentoo install-amd64-minimal CD(don't be alarmed, it won't install, just drop you to a prompt) and see if it detects the drives(fdisk -l)?

Corona,

THANK YOU! Sorry for the "all caps shout", but you're the first person to offer me even a glimmer of hope as to what might be the problem. I can tell you that I finally broke down and installed Mint on my 320G drive that also happens to harbor my Windows XP OS. I only did so in order to graduate from the (live?) Mint 10 DVD session. I have yet to boot to it; not even sure if the installation was successful; hope I didn't inadvertently mess-up XP, but I have at least two backups of it, so no worries there.

I will do my level best to provide the data you've requested and, hopefully, can do so via the hard-drive-installed version. Please forgive my ignorance of Linux. I have very limited experience with it, but intend to soldier my way through the basics in the very near future.

Thanks again for your response!

Respectfully,
Bamm

---------- Post updated at 08:49 PM ---------- Previous update was at 08:42 PM ----------

Also, would it be helpful for me to provide a full list of my hardware?

Here are the specs of my current rig:

Intel Core i7-920 @ 4.25 GHz • EVGA E758-A1 • (2) Corsair XMS3 6GB Triple Channel DDR3 • Corsair HX650 • (2) EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 • Samsung 2443BWT • WD Caviar Black WD5001AALS 500GB; WD3200AAKS; (2) WDC WD2500KS; Verbatim 2T USB 3 External • SB X-Fi ExtremeMusic • CM Stacker STC-T01 • Swiftech H2O-320 + XSPC Reservoir; Corsair CMXAF2 • Logitech Elite KB • Logitech MX510 • Logitech Z-5500 • Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1

Truly appreciate your help, Corona!

---------- Post updated at 09:14 PM ---------- Previous update was at 08:49 PM ----------

Again, my apologies to the UNIX/Linux veterans for posting the following graphic, but we can now see the newly-created Linux partitions on Disk 1. Ultimately, I'd like to install Mint 10 on Disk 4:



I realize this information has little bearing on the Linux side of the equation, but I felt compelled to provide it, if nothing more to document a quaint sanity check from a lifelong Redmond conscript like yours truly.




---------- Post updated 02-28-11 at 08:27 AM ---------- Previous update was 02-27-11 at 09:14 PM ----------

EDIT: My mistake. I'd forgotten that I'd swapped my XP install with my dedicated Steam drive; hence, the disk map above. Thing is, Mint doesn't boot. Is there an additional step required in order to launch Linux from disk? Some GRUB config I'm missing, or is that only needed for multiboot when competing OSes exist?

---------- Post updated at 10:07 AM ---------- Previous update was at 08:27 AM ----------

Corona, thanks for suggesting the Gentoo LiveCD option. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Gentoo doesn't acknowledge my USB keyboard at the "livecd" prompt, whereas keyboard input is possible during "pre-boot".

This is as far as I can get:

Nuts. If you can't get to some sort of linux prompt you can't do anything about mint not booting. Your USB keyboard not working is most inexplicable. I don't suppose you could hook up a PS2 keyboard?

I don't quite understand your goal now. Did you or did you not get linux installed? Do you or do you not want to reinstall?

By all accounts, Linux Mint installed okay; I just can't seem to get the hard drive to boot.

Maybe I should totally wipe out one of my "recognizable" SATA drives, plug it into SATA0, and try to force Mint to install. I've noticed that Mint loads into the KDE desktop much more quickly when only a single SATA drive is connected. Also, if I make the mistake of having my cable modem on, Mint complains about not having a working graphics driver (or something to that effect). If I say, "Go ahead & load anyway", it locks up. Turning off the modem seems to solve the problem, but only if doing so before giving it the go-ahead.

---------- Post updated at 10:27 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:25 AM ----------

I have at least two PS2 keyboards lying around somewhere; maybe I could give that a go.

Unfortunately this is not actually a linux problem then. This is a bootloader problem which happens well before Linux is even loaded.

Installing it on it's own, seperate drive would be a good idea if you're not intimately familiar with linux, grub, and how the two work with each other. I never did like the idea of dual boot; when it works it works well, but if anything goes wrong you've you've potentially destroyed two operating system installs and are given no feedback about why...

...whichever one is included in linuxmint-10-kde-dvd-amd64.iso, I suppose.