(Almost) invisible hard drive
 

Trying to install Slackware 11 to a Toshiba P200. When trying to partition for linux, cfdisk sees just 682.7MB of my 150gig hard drive. The portion it sees it describes as PRI/LOG with 255 heads, 63 sectors to track and 83 cylinders. That is for /dev/hda. Any other combination of /dev/hda(number) or /dev/sda(number) gives 'fatal error unable to open'.
The hard drive, which has Vista pre-loaded, has the usual Toshiba recovery partition of 1.4gig, a Vista partition of 74.2gig and a Data partition of 73.36gig - both the latter NTFS. I intended to split the data area into two re-partitioning one half for Linux and setting up a small swap area.
The invisibility of my hard drive is not peculiar to Slackware - my live CD of the latest version of DSL has exactly the same problem.
The same version of Slackware 11 installed without problems to a (much) older Toshiba laptop.
Is there anyone out there who knows the answer?

Welcome to LQ!

Why Slackware-11.0? We are at 12.1-rc1, very soon to be Slackware-12.1

cfdisk sees just 682.7MB

This is a CD that it's looking at.

When issuing cfdisk you give the drive (/dev/sd*), not a partition (/dev/sda*).

Try "cfdisk /dev/sda" to partition your Serial-ATA drive.

/dev/sda /dev/sd1 etc gives 'Fatal Error Unable to open disk drive'
Using Slack 11 'cos that's the latest I have.

Which kernel are you trying to boot ? Have you tried 'huge26.s' ?

That simple, huh?
And you again!
If we're both ever on the same continent I owe you many glasses of your favourite tipple.


Na toill diomb duine 'sam bith.
(loosely translated from the Gaelic, means, 'Incur not the displeasure of any person.'

Many, many thanks.
clansaorsa

No, problem.

This problem happens because many of the other kernels in SW 11.0 don't have some things compiled into them that will allow them to see the HDD, usually SATA support, but sometimes other things as well (and for other components). This is why I usually use the huge kernels for install, then switch to the generic kernel with initrd or compile my own.

BTW, at this moment, we probably are on the same continent :)