I'm using a fresh install of Xubuntu 8.10 and I have two ATA hd's. One is a simple 20GB for the OS and the slave is a larger 80gb hd for media storage. The problem is I am unable to locate the slave. Is there a method to finding these? I simply want it for transfering pictures from my camera and music files for storage is all. I have the OS hd set as "master" and have the media hd set as "slave", I assume I did that correctly? I then installed Xubuntu on the entire 20gb hd and after installation I am unable to locate the media 80gb hd. Have I made an error on the way I set up the drives? (slave/master)

Thanks if you can help me, I'm new to this stuff.

Neal

If the data cables have 80 wires then you probably should set both drives to cable select rather than master or slave.

Once that is done there are several ways to detect the drives in Ubuntu. The way that works for all distributions is to open a terminal window and enter the fdisk -l command.

Thanks for the reply. I don't mean to sound terribly ignorant, but how do I tell besides actually counting each wire if it has 80 wires?
By the looks of it I would say the cable has 80.
I wasn't sure about "cable select" so I set as master/slave but I'll sure look further into cable select. What does "cable select" represent anyway?

Thanks!

-desktop:~$ fdisk -l
Cannot open /dev/sda
Cannot open /dev/sdb
neal@neal-desktop:~$


BTW,this is the Current result of the fdisk command.

Use sudo for the fdisk command - but it appears 2 disks are certainly seen.

If you had been working with IDE drives for a while you would be able to tell if the data cable had 40 or 80 wires just by looking. Unfortunately I recommend counting the wires. The good news is that you only have to count the first 40 to see if there are any more wires. :-)

Cable select means that the disk drive can determine its position on the cable so the master/slave is set automatically.

The master disk is always on the end of the cable. Setting a disk to 'master' means that you engage terminating resistors in the disk controller. These are used to prevent reflections of the electrical signal back down the cable just as terminators are used on coaxial network cables for the same reason.

So there's a bit of hardware nuts and bolts for you. :-)

Thanks for the help!

Here is the results of the sudo fdisk command.



neal@neal-desktop:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for neal:

Disk /dev/sda: 20.0 GB, 20020396032 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2434 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x92419241

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2327 18691596 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 2328 2434 859477+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 2328 2434 859446 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 30.0 GB, 30060527616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3654 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000096

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
neal@neal-desktop:~$


I hate to have to post all this but this is what reads from fdisk.

I'm not even sure what the /dev/sda5 is? So looking at this I see that sda1 has a small asterik next to it under boot. Should sda2 have an asterek also?
Does this mean sda2 is not loading at boot? How do I alter it so it loads at boot?

Neal

This says that the first disk that Linux sees is a 20 GB disk.

This disk has three partitions named sda1, sda2, and sda5. sda1 and sda2 are primary partitions while sda5 is a logical volume partition. This partition is described as a swap partition so that is probably true. This is unusual but obviously not impossible.

The asterisk in the sda1 record means that that partition is marked as active for booting. Only Microsoft operating systems care about this setting.

This means that the second disk that Linux sees is a 30 GB disk.

This disk has no partitions.

Not necessarily. Only Microsoft operating systems care about the asterisk.

No.
That is determined by the boot loader. You can use the Microsoft boot loader if Windows is installed or you can use GRUB or LILO. The last two are generally installed by the Linux installer. (Only one of these two will be installed.)