I am attempting to install linux on a clean hard drive (160 Gb SATA) while leaving my other hard drive intact (500 Gb Sata). The other drive has been around for a while so I don't want to mess with partitions, I would feel much safer simply installing linux on one HD and leaving Windows on the other. Anyway, when I boot to the install CD (it came with a Linux for Dummies book (yes, I am a noob) so I assume it is not corrupt (also I can browse it fine in windows)) I can load the installer and select the language, and then I get a screen saying something along the lines of driver not found. Then it asks if I can select from a list but none seem to match. I am using a CD/DVD reader/writer that is SATA, and when I did some googling it seems Linux doesn't play nice with SATA. Is there a Linux release which will so I can install and startint Linuxing (if that's the term)?

My DVD drive is a Lite On (model LH-20A1S) if that helps...

What distro came on that (probably very old) CD?

I'd suggest you download and burn something current as pretty much any modern distro should support a SATA drive these days (that's all I use).

If it's a usb drive it may simply not be loading the usb drivers to make it capable of detecting the drive.

Well, certainly both the latest Ubuntu and the latest Fedora. Mandriva and Suse work too, as should anything that has a fairly recent kernel.

The Fedora I was trying to use was Version 7. I'm working on burning an Ubuntu CD...thanks for the help!

I've got 'Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7201S 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter' and I cannot install Debian Etch or newest Ubuntu ;/ I even cannot run Knoppix Live Distribution ;/ It stops when installer tries to load driver for optical drive. I will borrow old IDE CD-ROM drive from my friend and it should solve the problem.

At least Ubuntu should work as it installed just fine for me. Etch is getting on in age and has never worked very well with SATA devices - not out of the box at least.

I just plugged my optical drive to my SATA2USB adapter ( http://www.komnet.home.pl/usb_sata1.jpg ) and it works! Now it goes via USB which is well supported Problem solved Thanks anyway

try burning FEDORA 9 it's very good

just try it.

Ok, well I installed the newest Ubuntu and it is up and running...now if only I could get my interfaces running properly for programming in C and Java I'll be ready to rock and roll (and yes I know I can use vi or emacs, but I'm trying to get Eclipse running).

Why don't you install it from synaptic (System > Admin > Synaptic)? You'll probably want to install the sun 1.6 jdk as well (also via synaptic).

thanks for the hint, I'll give that a try then!