Hi, I just got my new 500GB Maxtor internal hard drive. When I try to format it as NTFS with GPartEd, the format goes through without a hitch. I can see the drive afterwards. However, when formatting to any linux-specific partition (ext2, ext3, ext4, swap, etc), the format completes, but immediately after, the drive can no longer be detected, and I have to physically turn the machine off and back on, then reboot into the livecd to get it to show up again. And even then, it no longer shows as a Linux partition, it shows up as Unknown. This is a brand new hard drive fresh from its packaging. And I'm trying to install 13.04 to it.

Does anyone know what's causing this problem?

Did you delete the default partition & re-create it as type linux? Many vendors ship drives
pre-partitioned for windows.

Once you do that, you should be able to format it no problem with mkfs -t ext4 /dev/XXX

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Typically internal drives do not come already partitioned/formatted.

How is the drive partitioned?

It's not partitioned at all right now. It just has a 470GB unknown partition mounted as root. Like I said, the drive doesn't seem to save partition data unless I format as NTFS. I *really* don't want to go back to Windows, LOL!

Ahh, I never thought of manually partitioning the drive. I'll see what parted does with it, and post the results.

Yes, you need to manually create a partition table and partition(s) then format with a file system.

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While making a filesystem on an entire unpartitioned disk is technically possible, doing that can lead to some odd behavior, such as what you experienced. The kernel and various tools will first try to interpret that first sector as containing a partition table.

Also, an NTFS filesystem begins right at the start of the allocated space, while an ext2/3/4 filesystem begins at offset 1024. So, taking something previously formatted as NTFS and reformatting it as ext2/3/4 leaves behind a remnant of the NTFS filesystem, which again can cause some minor confusion.

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Try using a Parted Magic live CD to partition and format the drive to whatever Linux file system you choose:
http://partedmagic.com/doku.php
Parted Magic is very easy to use and works very well.

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Good to know for next time.

Manually partitioning the drive didn't work. However, installing Ubuntu normally, allowing it to partition the drive by itself did. (Go figure... when in doubt, let the system do the work itself.) But thanks for the help anyways.