Hi Guys

My trusty Toshiba Satellite Pro running Linux RHEL 4 has just given up on me and I urgently need to re-install on another laptop. Bought a Dell Inspiron 1720 yesterday with 250Gb disk, shrunk the OS partition (Windows Vista) to allow room for Linux and boot Linux from CD. Problem is that Linux can't see the disk. I've searched the web for a driver and can't find anything that ties in exactly with the disk spec but am not really sure what I'm looking for. Anyone any ideas ?

Just an update on this. RHEL5 works, so there must be drivers missing in the version of RHEL4 that I was trying to install. I have started a new thread with the next problem !

The old laptop probably used an IDE hard drive while the new one most likely uses a SATA hard drive. From there, the BIOS can either configure the SATA drive to be presented in IDE emulation mode or AHCI/RAID mode. I just had an install problem similar to yours with a Sony. The Sony's BIOS presented SATA drives in IDE emulation mode. In this mode, the RHEL 4 installer couldn't see the disks. However, if I changed it to AHCI mode, it would magically see the disks!

You may want to check in your BIOS to see if there are any options having to do with a "SATA AHCI" mode. I believe AHCI offers a little performance boost because it can take advantage of modern disk tech (NCQ,power,etc.).

NOTE: Windows probably won't take well to the abrupt switch to AHCI, but there are tons of posts on the internet having to do with that. Search on "windows ahci".

Thanks CRC123. The only BIOS option appears to be to change from SATA to ATA (and you also have to disable flash memory). I've tried this but RHEL4 still does not recognise the disk and, as you suggest, Vista doesn't seem to like it very much. I have also tried to install the AHCI and SATA drivers (in various combinations!) during the installation of RHEL4 but still with no luck. I think RHEL5 is my only option (although a costly one). Even with RHEL5 it appear not straightforward since DELL pre-assign four partitions to Vista leaving no partitions available for Linux (see my other post if interested!).

Sorry I couldn't help.

If RHEL 5 is costing you a lot, you might try CentOS. It is a distribution that takes Red Hat's freely available source code, strips red hat proprietary "stuff", and compiles it into a Linux distribution! Check it out: www.centos.org

Have a good one and good luck!