[SOLVED] Cannot install linux on dell inspiron 1501 (hdd not detected)
 

Hi I just got a dell inspiron 1501 today booted it up rejected the windows EULA then rebooted with a gentoo install disc i ran the command "fdisk /dev/hda" but it brings up warnings "you will not be able to write to partion table" "Device contains neither a valid DOS partion table, nor Sun, SGI.." But it also displays the size of the disk in the cdrom and not the hard drive, I ran csdisk and it fails with "Disc readonly you do not have permision to write" also the type of message you would get from a cdrom So i put in the windows disc and it detects all partions the recovery and main partion i deleted those and tried gentoo again but still fails. I started to try other distros all fail with similar messages "cannot detect hard drive" Fedora core, Slackware (10.2), suse(9.2), gentoo (2005.0 - 2006.1), mandrake (10.1), ubuntoo (5.04 no partionable media were found)(dapper hangs)

I ran ls -l /dev/dvd and it is pointing to hda

I have no idea if the harddrive is sata or not but /dev/sda returns fatal error disk can not be found I was thinking the reason /dev/hda is linked to the cdrom is because its the only ide drive, (I really dont know, im totaly new to laptops i normally build my own desktops so i always no what is inside them)


any help appreciated, Thank you

Insprion 1501 Turion 64 MK36 (2.0GHz, 512K)
1024MB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM (1x1024)
60GB (5,400 rpm) Hard Drive ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 256MB HyperMemory

I could not find the hard drive info on dells site and the bios is so limited it says:
ATAPI CD-ROM: HL-DT-STCD-RW/DVD-ROM-(PM)
Fixed Disk: FUJITSU MHV2060BH-(S1)

The 'Fixed Disk: FUJITSU' thing is a (S)ATA hard drive (a quick google search told me that). So, I'd guess the next thing to check in the BIOS are the SCSI settings. You may find the disk listed there, and possibly some settings to enable.

Thank you for replying, I have nothing in the bios refering to SCSI the only mention of the hardrive is in then main tab and there is no way of highlightning it you can only change the date and time the other mention of it is the boot select section

ok im guessing the problem comes from the chipset "ati" maybe these drivers are not loaded at boot therefore the sata is not being detected since the southbridge chipset is not being supported proberly.. so the question now is am i chasing a lost cause, all i know is its a ATI SATA controller as of yet i cant find the version number but i wonder if there is any distro supporting it. When i can get my hands on some blank cdr's I can play about but theres no way im using M$ so it will be going back to dell :(

What is the output from running
note that's a lowercase "L"

fdisk -l gives no output what so ever

I found the hard drive's site
http://www.fujitsu.com/global/servic...h-catalog.html

edit: lspci list a lot of unknown devices under IDE interface, ISA interface SMbus, Audio device System peripheral, if it will help i will try to copy the exact output later

ok i installed windows to use cpu-z it says chipset ATI Xpress 200 (RS480) Southbridge ATI SB600

dudez
just do the following ....
1.> go to ur bios
2.> diable sata support
3.> save the new bios settings
4.> reboot and install

I wish I could but the bios has hardly any options you can only change things like the time not enable/disable sata

I found this thread they have the same probs as me but have got a lot further I just dont know what i am missing http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-519339.html

and this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=299929
they all use this command at boot
or but for me they do not detect my hard drive
my lspci output: I have since seen this error I tested the other versions of gentoo and this error is only in Gentoo 2006.0 so I guess thats not my problem

EDIT: I tried using a ubuntoo disc what I installed on my mums laptop to see if i could get that working since its the newest distro i have on disc but that fails after decompressing the kernel

Sorry for the double post thought it should be done
 

ok I burnt a fresh copy of distro booted with these param's A better solution now i have detected my hard drive and am about to install hopefully it goes well thanks for all the help.. Leon

Thanks so much... It worked
 

I just wanted to thank Absolute_P for his post. I am using the ATI SB600 South Bridge and my installation disk was not detecting my hard drives. Thanks to the pci=nomsi boot option, it now detects my drives.

Hi,

Just came across this thread as I am having the same problem at work, we had just bought a batch of computers with the motherboard: Gigabyte - GA-MA69VM-S2 , we were using SATA hard drives with this, and the disto (in our case pclinuxos) wasn't discovering the hard drive.

It turned out to be the BIOS, you need to change 'Legacy IDE' to say 'Native IDE' under the SATA Controller configuration, and then your distro will see your hard drive.

I hope this helps someone!

Jo