i bought a UltraATA connector for a hardrive i had, cus i have a HP n730 and the hardrive connections are diff.
i want to put linux on that other hardrive i got, but the thing is i cannot erase several partitions i supposedly have, and when i go fdisk on it it doesnt show anything.
id like to know how could i erase those three partitions, and how could i install linux into it, is it that i just have to set it up as boot? and if i do, when i insert that linux disk, where would i target the installation?

Do you have support for the hard drive controller? You may have to get drivers for the card or you may can enable it in the kernel. You may want to search the forums for the model of the card and see what it turns up. You may find where someone else posted how they got theirs to work.

Hope that helps. I have never used one of those cards though.

What does "doesn't show anything" mean? Is the device apparently not there, or apparently entirely empty (no partitions)? If you don't see the disc at all (from the BIOS or an existing OS installation) then it sounds as though you
need a special driver. The disc may (or may not) be supported by some particular Linux kernel build. This has nothing to do with support in whatever OS you currently have on there.

If the disc is visible but apparently empty, why not try a low-level format? If you were going to delete the
partitions anyway, why not? Are you *sure* that the partitions are really still there? Could they have been logical partitions inside a physical partition which *has* been deleted (which makes the logical partitions unusable)?


*** Special warning ***
I have heard of problems installing RH Fedora on top of an existing Windows installation, but I don't know whether this affects separate discs, rather than separate partitions on the same disc. I've never seen Fedora installed and I don't have any relevant experience.

The installation routines in most Linux distributions will happily format a hard disc for you, and will report intelligibly about any existing partitions before allowing you to do anything irreversible. All usable hard discs should be shown, and you can install over any of them. Also, you can use a Linux installation disc simply to check whether the Linux version does support your hard disc - you can always force a reboot before making changes. It's possible, but not especially likely, that installing a Linux distribution will work around BIOS problems and will get you started even if FDISK won't. Unfortunately, you might then have a working installation which the BIOS won't boot - that means it's time to upgrade your BIOS. Unhappy experience speaks (and I couldn't actually upgrade my BIOS either, but that is now unusual).

The usual way to boot Linux is from a boot loader (LILO, GRUB, some mysterious other). You needn't mark the actual boot disc as bootable, as long as the loader is on a disc which *is* bootable; again, most installations will do the right thing. My experience with GRUB has been entirely trouble-free, even in cases where I had multiple Windows installations, multiple kernels in one Linux installation on the same hard disc, and and a different Linux installation entirely on a different disc. I have had moments of annoyance as a new installation has failed to confirm existing boot menu entries, but nothing was deleted.

I hope some of this helps.

well i have winxp, but on the UltraATA i got nothing on it, its suppossed to be 60 gigs, and when i try to install linux, or format it only displays 34 or so, and right now i have it hooked on my present computer, and well it comes out that i have three partitions, and i remember something happened last time that i did have three partitions, and somehow they just disappeared and all the sudden i just have 34 out 60 gigs.
its kind of hard to figure out a way to format the whole hard drive, and what im going to try today is hook up my old computer, and format it there, and install slackware, then im going to put it back to my new computer and try to use it, and from there on ill see whats up with the whole settings and things, i think im going to need a bunch of drivers since everything my computer has is intel.
in case it doesnt work, id like to ask whats a way to completely erase EVERYTHING from a hard drive, no matter what it is. Every time i check for partitions it comes out clean, but only 34 gigs, and i bought a 60 gig. as well as i used it before so i know im not wrong.

It sounds as though youir BIOS only supports discs up to 2^35 bytes
("34 GB"). This may only affect you as long as you are using the BIOS,
which XP mostly doesn't (just for early stages of booting). Perhaps
FDISK does? You certainly need to use LBA (though not, for this size,
48-bit LBA). Some BIOSes need to be told explicitly to use LBA in the
CMOS settings. Some just can't do it at all. BIOS update time?

Not seeing any partitions is a bit odd. I suggest looking at the last
few bytes of the first sector and seeing whether the partition table has
been deleted. You can read cylinder 0, head 0, sector 1 - yes, 1! -
with DEBUG with the necessary BIOS calls; I can post instructions
later if you need them. Submit a hex dump of the bytes 400-512 or
so here and I'll look at them.