Can anyone please help, I am trying to install NetBSD on a new Dell XPS710 dual core pc, with a 500 and 250 gig drives. While install NetBSD, it can't seem to find any hard disk. Windows XP is installed and working correctly on disk 0, which is the 500 gig. No idea as to why the drives are undetected. Have seen similar threads, but seem to be on older systems.

Hello,

Is the 250 GB drive detected in Windows? Also, do you use the whole 500 GB on your first disk?

The 500 gig is partitioned in half, only first half is viewable by windows. The second half is formatted as ext3, so I can install a linux distro. The 250 gig is unformatted now, but it was viewable in its original ntfs format.

Hello,

And when you go to install NetBSD, after you choose yes to the question shall we continue to partitioning and the question: "On which disk do you want to install NetBSD?" comes up, it only shows your first hard drive (500 GB)? Is that correct?

One possibility is to further partition the 500 GB hard drive so that NetBSD can be installed on it. 250 GB is more than enough to install both a Linux distro and NetBSD. I have Slackware, FreeBSD, and NetBSD all on in 80 GB and I could drastically reduce that. I would say that 30-40 GB is more than enough (assuming you don't have huge multimedia files to store) for both any Linux distro and NetBSD.

No, it does not see the 500 gig or the 250. When I click the yes to go to partitioning, it gives the error that it can not find any drives to use. My guess is that it is something to do with the sata drives that is not supported, even though I am trying NetBSD version 1.6.1 and version 3.1, and get the same error for both

Hello,

I doubt that it is due to SATA support. I have a SATA drive and NetBSD 3.1 saw my drive.

I do wonder one thing, how do you have them configured for the jumper settings. Do you have them as cable select or is one set as master and the other slave, or something else. My thought, which is at best a hunch, is that if they are setup for cable select then perhaps then that they are not being properly recognized. If so, then changing the jumper settings to establish one as master and the other one slave could solve the problem.

Both drives are recognized by linux, because I installed Ubuntu on the second partition of the 500 gig drive yesterday, and the install saw both drives. As far as the jumper settings, only the primary drive has pins, but no jumper is attached. I am searching dell site to see what the default factory setting is. I have always owned older pc's and this one is new. Even the dvd, and dvd+-rw are sata.

Hello,

I don't know what to tell you. This is as far as my thinking is taking me so far. I would encourage you not to give up. And please keep me informed of your progress.