can't fdisk
 

I'm installing slackware 9.0 and can't seem to fdisk one of my hard drives. The offending drive is hooked up on the primary slave channel and when I try to run fdisk I get the error 'cannot scan /dev/hdb' (that might not be the exact wording, but it's close) I really need this drive cause my other hard disk is rather small. Ideas anyone?

You could try cfdisk. Their functionality is similar, although that same similarity might make them suceptible to the same problems. My only other suggestion is to make sure that your master/slave jumpers on the two primary-channel drives are set correctly. If you're using cable select, try setting the jumpers manually. Does your BIOS correctly identify the errant drive?

Master and slave jumpers are both set correctly, BIOS identifies the drive, and cfdisk won't run on that drive either. I seem to remember the error message being slightly different for cfdisk but I can't check exactly what it was right now. I know the drive is working becuse I was just using it in a windows system. Could windows' crap be screwing up the drive?

The hard drive isn't larger than the bios supports?

In my experience, Windows can't do anything to a drive that would keep fdisk from scanning it. You might try reformatting the drive if you have a Windows boot disk (either a Win98 rescue floppy or a Win2k/NT install disk will do this). You could also try GNU Parted as another alternative to fdisk.

http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/