m running pc mint mint live.cd.boot.flash ,have put 2 hdd but none disks are seen in a8v bios boot order. mint recognize st320 (st80 cant see). intention was to install mint on st320 and dual boot it with st80 on w7 but when installation comes on banshees and audio codecs it crashes. donnt remembe where it crashes first time (but it overvrite on w7)
might be bios needs flash and install iso is broken or needed preparations were not executed - or els. is there some easy smooth check to know closer what the matter is?

fdisk -l
... from terminal (maybe with sudo prefix).

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A couple of questions -

Have you turned the disks on in the BIOS? Check your settings (SATA/PATA)
Is your Win7 isntallation currently active on the two disks you mentioned? I'm guessing it isn't, but thought I'd check.

I've never installed the boot loader/grub on separate disks like that so you are in unknown territory for me, but you may want to start simpler until you get the hang of it.

In the past, it has been recommended to install Windows first since it didn't play well being second fiddle. (something about the MBR) Then, install Linux and you should be good to go.

To recap - (my opinion only. There are many ways to skin the !cat)

Make sure drives are being recognized in BIOS.
Install Windows
Install Mint

Optional idea - Install either Windows or Mint and then use a virtual machine for the other such as Oracle VirtualBox.

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i surfed out some commands but cant see much from results. smbios 2.3 is present, smaller disk is invisible and and on main hdd few installation entries are seen

none of disks are seen in bios and cant enlist them in, mint can se one
i tried with win dvd install it starts but asked for drivers. (when live cd mint made install entry it overwritte on win so i formated hdd and forgot to take out drivers backup -i even had systemimagebackup on an part.)

Depending on your computer, entry to setup will be shown on the boot screen, will have to be fast as it's only there for a second or so. on my computers it's the delete key , escape key and the F2 or F12 keys. there will be only 1 you need. you may have to reboot several times before you get in, timing is critical too soon or late and you miss it. write down whatever function key it tells you to use and restart and have your finger on that key and press it as soon as the notice comes on the screen. from there you can see if your drives are recognized and if not it depends on how the bios is setup how you do that.

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Hi. Have you other machine to check those devices? It seems like HD failure (if BIOS cant detect it).
Linux detect hardware if the BIOS cant see it (on the old mothers, if your BIOS only see in the HD 1024 sectors, linux can see all the disk up to 2Tb).
Or you have a problem on your mother (check interface conectors on the mother and HDs, clean it and try again, and check electric cables too).
Once you clean, you can try with:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 (this command clean mbr and you can partitioning like on a clean disk. You must reboot to write new partitions).

Have a nice day.

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hija! was out 2 bd cards greetings, lots happend and i aint better at cli.
-it was mb fading out (it was second hand mb used for max cloks), now is 1551.G intel pc. luckily i saved mint stick it halped me a lot on other pc, due to physical stress it couldnot boot but mint saved ma day. thruogh it sylvia mint was downloaded and instaled,qiuck smooth install. after some (kernel?)updates from bios pc runs quick dual boot(c-w7/64 and on d-mintsylvcinn/64).
sylvia.cinemon is fine stable os, without doubt i can recomend this mint to non.dos.knowlege windows user who need help in lynux.