Harddisk not recognized after reinstallation of motherboard
 

Hi, I bought a new CPU and motherboard and tried to insert the motherboard into the computer. Problems occured (probably, the power supply's output ain't high enough), so I switched back to the old hardware for now. This combination of hardware had run before I had re-inserted it.

Currently, I'm using a Knoppix (thanks! :)) to have a running system.

This is an Asus A7V motherboard and an IBM-DTLA-305030 harddisk.

I had a hardware specialist with me (thanks! :)) when setting up the hardware, so there shouldn't be newbie mistakes in that regard.

- When booting (and in BIOS), the harddisk is detected:
Occasionally (maybe because I pressed Pause to often - in order to take note of the screen messages), next, the message occured,
Next in the boot sequence, there are those two tables where hardware information and the PCI devices are listed. In the first of them, my harddrive is listed OK (when the aforementioned message doesn't appear).
Next, there is a message,
which stays there for a noticably long time.
Next, there's the message,
which seems rather queer to me - as any drives had been recognized before.
Next (when I don't boot from CD), the Ubuntu boot sequence shows up, stating,
and hanging on
- Having the Knoppix system running now, I can see the contents of the harddisk that did not boot, i.e., I can see my recent changes in /etc/apt/sources.list.
Hence, that file system does exist and had been mounted.

I thought of rescuing the contents of my home folder to a second partition (and reinstalling Ubuntu thereafter). Unfortunately, Knoppix has replaced several folder with symbolic links to folders being in Knoppix' RAMDISK.

So, another question was how to access the actual folders on hda1 - but on the other hand, I'm not sure if reinstalling the operation system would really help and I also think this harddisk should be intact ...
The main question is, what's wrong with this hardware recognition? How can I make the existing Ubuntu installation recognize it?

Thanks for any ideas... :)

Hi there,

When you are mounting your drive from knoppix, what are you mounting it as? You should probably mount the drive under examination under something like /mnt/hddtofix. This would then mean that the knoppix symbolic links would not interfere at all with it. My fear now is that it may have already done so if you tried to mount your problem filesystem as a root filesystem from knoppix.

As for what is wrong with the hardware recognition, it may be a few things. If the bios itself is moaning, you really didnt want to let it try to boot into an OS. First, check that the connections between the motherboard and HDD are sound. Make sure they are well seated, remove them, make sure no pins have been pushed through (I saw this once on a Time computer) and push them back in firmly. Also, check there are no kinks, dents or breaks in the cable.
The next thing (if it is still complaining) is to check if your HDD requires a "Master Only" setting when there is no slave device, and that this jumper is set if required. This can cause issues.
Have you added other hardware beyond reinstalling the motherboard, or made upgrades to Processors, fans, graphics cards etc? You might be experiencing problems with the power supply.

You could to pop the HDD into an external case, and try mounting it read only on a completely different machine, then running fsck to see how it copes. This will at least make very sure that there are no faults on the HDD.

I have also experienced the odd duff IDE cable, and had to replace them occasionally. Of particular note are the rounded IDE cables which seem to have a higher failure rate than the normal ribbons (due to the fact that some of them are just ribbons tortured to fit into the round sleeve, and tend to be more susceptable to kinking and breaking).

I hope this helps you out, I know how frustrating it can be to not be able to get to your data any more.

Danny

dannystaple,
Thanks for your input! :)
I'm not sure as Knoppix does this mounting itself. I.e., I'm inputting,
(Sorry, that quote's probably a bit overwhelming.) - Actually, I did nothing but boot that Live CD, yet, and didn't mount anything manually.
I think my original harddisk is still intact - but just not accessible now - for any reason. - Actually, Knoppix opens the disks read-only.
In the BIOS setup - as well in the initial boot sequence messages -, the harddisk is recognized... (most of the times ...)
They are!
Where would I check that?
No, this is exactly the hardware that's been installed when everything worked before. One thing that changed is, I'd probably changed the assignment of PCI cards to PCI slots. I'm not sure which card had been in which slot, and there had been some error messages about that. Meanwhile, I had re-arranged the cards and those messages stopped.
I'm not sure about that. Obviously, Knoppix then wouldn't replace those actual folders by symbolic links anymore. On the other hand, there must be a way to overcome the symbolic links, and to see the real file system. - Anyways, the primary issue appears to be to be able to boot into it.
Also, I'd be glad not having to buy external supplies that I wouldn't need lateron.
Yes, but it worked until yesterday. This could be a solution(!), though, as anything else seems to be so unlikely...
Thank you very much. This is a situation where I (as a hardware newbie) can't achieve too much without external input and help/support. I've learned much these days! :)
Your help is greatly appreciated. :)

Hi,

Are you sure knoppix is even mounting the drive at all? I am not even sure it would be. Those bits would be read only because they are probably decompressed from PackFS from the live CD. The symlinks are, after all, to a ramdisk.

You can try to create a directory in /mnt, and mount the drive manually. What is the output of "df -h"? And what is in the knoppix "/etc/fstab" file?

Danny

Hi Robbert,
your hard disk is not being seen at all.

When your in knoppix type mount. It will show you all the current disks that are mounted. If you see no mention of /dev/hda then its not mounted.

Also if you type fdisk -l it will show you all detected disks and partitions.

I reckon the cable is duff, can you swap the cables for the hard disk and the cdrom? Obviously if this works the harddisk will boot but your cd drive wont work. If swapping the cables does not work change the connectors on the motherboard.

So put the hard disk cable into channel 2 and the cdrom into channel 1. This will tell you if you have a problem with the harddisk,cable or connector.

As the cdrom works on channel 2, plugging the hard disk into channel 2 with the working cable from the cdrom should allow it to work. If the hard disk does'nt work there they may be a problem with it.

karlos

Danny,
that's right: The harddisk hasn't been mounted at all:
/etc/fstab:
KarlosDaJackel,
I'd used the CD-ROM's cable with the harddisk but there was no difference. Also, I switched the channels: Both devices were recognized then (CD-ROM as Primary Master, HDD as Secondary Master). Nevertheless, the hardware recognition in the second stage of my BIOS still failed:
- There's something special with my motherboard and BIOS: The motherboard has two controllers (by "controller" I mean those sets of slots).
Controller 1 is labeled: "Primary IDE" and "Secondary IDE" - that's where the devices are currently plugged in.
Controller 2 is labeled: "Primary ATA100" and "Secondary ATA100" - I slightly remember there were cables in before I removed the motherboard, nevertheless, devices being plugged in there now don't get recognized at all.

There are two BIOS, too: The first one, "ASUS A7V ACPI BIOS Revision 1004C", apparently does recognize the harddisk (and anything else). Its last messages is "PCI Device Listing". Next, "Ultra100 (tm) BIOS Version 2.01" tries to get its work done: "Detecting...", and then:
BTW, the first BIOS recognizes the harddisk as UDMA4 - which appears to be related to ATA. The harddisk cable - in opposite to the CDROM cable - has more ribbons (or lines) - probably 80...

I'll try again to insert the harddisk cable there (which led to having the harddisk not being recognized at all before), and have a look at the BIOS settings then.

Thank you

Update: The harddisk does not get recognized at all when its cable is plugged into the ATA Controller. Then, it also doesn't show up in the BIOS setup dialogs.

knoppix@ttyp0[dev]$ sudo fdisk -l

Platte /dev/hde: 30.7 GByte, 30738677760 Byte
255 Köpfe, 63 Sektoren/Spuren, 3737 Zylinder
Einheiten = Zylinder von 16065 * 512 = 8225280 Bytes

Gerät Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hde1 1 2075 16667406 83 Linux
/dev/hde2 2076 3497 11422215 83 Linux
/dev/hde3 3498 3619 979965 82 Linux Swap
/dev/hde4 3620 3737 947835 5 Erweiterte
/dev/hde5 3620 3737 947803+ 82 Linux Swap


Dude, that "hde" up there is your hard disk. Its 30Gig and has 2 linux and 2 swap partitions. Its obviously just the wrong controoler or chanell as its showing as hde instead of hda. There must be a way of setting it up in the bios. Maybe you can set that controller to load before the other one? Your so close to solving this.

Never put HDD with CDrom in one line.
CHECK if you forget master/slave/cable select pin.

Update(flashed) your motherboard BIOS from the vendor website.

Is there any 'ENHANCED MODE' ATA setting in the motherboard bios?
If so set to compatible mode.

Good point Karlos! :) Now I finally know which controller *must* be right!

Anyways, the first BIOS still doesn't recognize the HDD when it's connected with "that ATA" controller, while the second BIOS does. If the HDD is connected to the other controller, it's the opposite. The Linux kernel's still "waiting for root file system" (although *I've* not waited more than a few minutes on the - possible - results; this might be a great chance! LOL ;)). Tried almost any combination of plugs/connectors and BIOS settings now.

BobyMC,
I hadn't.
The jumper at the harddisk still is - correctly - set to Master.
That BIOS I have is a little crappy and featureless, indeed. I'll look out for some DOS boot disk in order to check an upgrade. Although I think this also should work without as it worked before...
Not exactly. There are three settings, 1. "ATA boot device" (whatever that means), 2. "Load ATA devices before SCSI devices", and 3. "Enable ATA". I've played with all that settings; the only thing having an effect (on the second BIOS) was en-/disabling ATA.

Thanks!

"Waiting for root filesystem" payed - et voilà - there it is...

Thanks all :)

LINUX recognized that 'ATA stuff(enable/dis-enahanced/compatible)' at interrupt 169.
LINUX don't care about it.
That could be the main issue.

Correct me ? if I'm wrong.

Cheers.

The main issue was that I'd expected that both BIOS (1st BIOS = normal, 2nd BIOS = ATA) would need to recognize the harddisk. Actually, that ATA harddisk needs to be recognized by the second BIOS.
Where would I look that up?

- BTW, I just looked at kern.log, and there are lots of messages, "hda IRQ probe failed" and "hdb IRQ probe failed". That might explain why mounting the file system still is relatively slow compared with before that hardware re-installation.
Currently, in the (first) BIOS setup, the Primary Master's set to Auto; I'll try if it helps when I set it to None.

Thanks

Just put in NORMAL mode OR compatible(disable ATA?) mode HDD bios setting for LINUX OS.

"noboby care Interrupt 169" message came up from one of my linux OS at boot(forget what it was).

Greetz

Thanks. To be true, I'm just happy I'm able to boot now. In my case, I've disregarded the "normal" BIOS, completely, and just made sure that ATA recognition worked (as this would make the harddisk "hde instead of hda" as Karlos noticed). I wouldn't set that as a rule, though. ;)

You're welcome.