Hi I am new here as you can tell. I am pretty used to linux; however, this problem, I just cant seem to figure out.

I had to erase disk / create new partitions for my install as my previous install got mucked up (was the same linux os, mandrake 10.2 LE), and the harddrive hdb was could not even be found while i was setting up partitions for my new install.
It's there in /dev/hdb, i can do hdparm on it, however, it says "Unable to read" when I attempt to fdisk it, and cfdisk doesnt even show it.

What the hell is wrong with it? Is it stuck in some write protected mode from the original mandrake install? There must be some way to get it working again, I know the HD works fine.

Thanks for any help.

hdb would be the slave drive on the primary IDE controller. Have you changed the jumpers on the drive? It should be a slave drive. Cable select sometimes doesn't work well. Have you disabled it in the BIOS?
Are you running Fdisk as super user or user? I assume you are using the MDK install cd. If not you'll need to be root to Fdisk.
What do you have at hda?
If the BIOS recognizes it, and it is configured correctly, you should be able to write to it.

Welcome to LQ. When running cfdisk, the default always assumes /dev/hda. If you want to run cfdisk on a different drive, you need to explicitly declare it. Try this
Additionally, this issue could be caused by a bad cable connection or incorrect jumper setting, and like teckk suggested, I'd also recommend *not* using cable select. Instead, make *all* your drives either a master or a slave. Good luck with it -- J.W.

Well, cfdisk says
fdisk doesnt even see the drive.

I was running both as root.
The thing is, it was working fine (hdb) before my installation got messed up due to some driver conflicts with my ATI radeo 9700 pro. I had to erase disk, set up new partitions, and install mandrake 10.2 again. Strange thing about mandrake is, if I let it autoallocate/autochoose mountpoints, it does /mnt and /mnt/home instead of / and /home, and only gives /mnt (root) 5 gbs of space, which, when done putting on all the packages i need for development , gives me less than a gb of working space on my root partition. I had a hell of a time getting around that to give my root part 15~ gb of space.
I had hdb mounted as /storage , in my original install.

Could it have, because of an improper shutdown and subsequent format, been stuck in some protected mode? Thats the only thing I can think of...

PS. I have everything on hda# atm.

Sudden/improper shutdowns can definitely corrupt your filesystem, so that could the cause of the problem. If you are sure all the cable connections are OK and that the drive is jumpered correctly, maybe you might consider temporarily removing /dev/hda from your PC, then relocate /dev/hdb to /dev/hda. (Note you'll also need to temporarily change the jumper setting.) The idea here of course is to temporarily take the current /dev/hda out of the picture.

Once that is done, restart the installation process, but only to the point where you do the partitioning work. Ignore the automatic partitioning option, and manually declare your own partitions (in this case it sounds like you just want to make it a single partition). As long as the partitioning exercise is successful, cancel the rest of the installation, return both drives to their original positions (confirm again that the jumpers are appropriate) and you should be ready to go -- your original /dev/hda drive would be exactly as you left it, and presumably the /dev/hdb drive will be recognized by fdisk and cfdisk. If so, you can then manually mount it, add it to fstab, etc and you'll be sitting pretty.

On the other hand if the repartitioning of /dev/hdb fails, and neither fdisk nor cfdisk can recognize it, then I'd have to conclude that the drive is defective in some way. Good luck with it -- J.W.

Alright ill try that later on today thanks ill report on how it went.

Hooray. Thank you very much J.W. Your suggestion worked flawlessly.

Outstanding - I'm stoked that I was able to help. Congrats on solving the problem, and thanks for posting back. -- J.W.