formating / partitioning a new hard drive
 

i have been trying to partition my new hard drive in linux, but for some reason its not being recognized...

[atlantis@localhost atlantis]$ ls /dev/hd*
/dev/hda@ /dev/hda2@ /dev/hda6@ /dev/hda8@ /dev/hdd@
/dev/hda1@ /dev/hda5@ /dev/hda7@ /dev/hdc@


the hard drive should be /dev/hdb .... anyways, im new to linux, and have never formatted or partitioned a hard drive in linux before. i thought i could just use fdisk but there is no /dev/hdb so now im stuck, and dont know what to do.

Try "fdisk /dev/hdb", or in Mandrake, try using diskdrake (I think that's what it's called, it's Mandrake's partitioning tool and is very friendly).

disk drake doesnt see that there is a second drive... and

[root@localhost atlantis]# fdisk /dev/hdb

Unable to open /dev/hdb


my linux doesnt detect hdb... but windows does.

Just a guess: Based on your listing, I think your second drive is being detected, but it's appearing as hdd. Try running: fdisk /dev/hdd and see if that's your second drive.

On one of my boxes the second drive is hdb, on the other it's hdd. I don't know if this will help but it's worth a try. Also, as an alternative to fdisk you might also want to try cfdisk. Their purposes are the same but personally I prefer cfdisk. In any case the commands you're running are the right ones. -- J.W.

it shouldnt be, i have a cdrom drive as my secondary slave.. which would be wehre hdd would be... but anyways i tried mounting and didnt work... and fdisk doesnt dettect it as a drive

Well, that's odd. Are all the devices jumpered correctly, and are the power and data cables seated securely? If you go into your BIOS, does the second drive appear? Assuming the answer is Yes to all these items, then I'm likewise puzzled as to why it isn't showing up. The commands you're running are correct, and it should be detected. -- J.W.

yes, the answer to all of those are yes... the even weirder thing is that windows detects it... and even weirder is that in mandrake control center, it shows 2 hard drives, but when you click config tool, it opens up disk drake, but with only 1 hd

Sorry - you've stumped me. I wish I had an answer for you, but this is baffling to me. I'm not familiar with diskdrake, but if the control center shows 2 drives, then you should be able to access them both. Hopefully someone with superior knowledge can help out. -- J.W.

Lets look at this . Motherboards typically have two IDE channels channel 0 and channel 1.(numbering starts with 0 when talking about computers) IDE channel 0 master is allocated HDA for primary and HDB for slave. IDE channel 1 is allocated HDC <- for primary and HDD for slave. Did you daizy-chain off of your boot drive with the new disk? Or the CDROM? If you hooked up to the CDROM, the new disk is /dev/hdc.

no... i understand how all this stuff works... and my 2nd hard drive is the slave of my primary ide channel. so, my primary hard drive is the master of that same channel... my 2nd hard drive is /dev/hdb

This is just more of the same....
What does "cfdisk -P s" show?

Oops, </newbie mode> sorry. A couple of things to try;
temporarily connect the new drive on the secondary channel master/alone.
(checking to see if you need to add some device entries in /dev) Avoid using Cable Select. (I don't suggest using this jumper setting at any time) See if you can access the drive as /dev/hdc then. With brand new drives either use fdisk or cfdisk with the -z option. Use the command line tools to limit the number of variables in your problem.

First Last
# Type Sector Sector Offset Length Filesystem Type (ID) Flags
-- ------- -------- --------- ------ --------- ---------------------- ---------
1 Primary 0 16852184 63 16852185 Win95 FAT32 (LBA) (0C) Boot (80)
2 Primary 16852185 117226304 0 100374120 Extended (05) None (00)
5 Logical 16852185 48307454 63 31455270 Win95 FAT32 (LBA) (0C) None (00)
6 Logical 48307455 79762724 63 31455270 Linux (83) None (00)
7 Logical 79762725 111217994 63 31455270 Linux (83) None (00)
8 Logical 111217995 117226304 63 6008310 Linux swap (82) None (00)
[root@localhost atlantis]#

in themandrake control center, its shows this

Model: ?6Y120P0

Vendor: ?Maxtor

Bus: ?ide

Channel: ?secondary

New devfs device: ?/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/disc

Old device file: ?/dev/hdb

Media class: ?hd


but when i click config, that whole device is not there... and the files /dev/hdb and /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/disc do not exist

Okay, this is your drive (I am guessing).
I do not know anything about SATA drives. Do you need to set a jumper or something? Are they seen as a different device? This model says it is ATA or SATA. (???)
If the fdisk programs are not finding the drive, something is "whacky" with the hardware config.