Fedora installer doesn't recognise existing partitions

[OtterNZ]

I chucked my trusty Fedora 16 disk in an old computer of mine, and I'm having some problems. Sorry for the wall of text, but I want to describe the whole process I followed.

I set up on old PC to play around with, I moved an 80gb HDD from my main computer (which actually did have a fedora install on it already) and put it in as the only drive in this old computer. I tried to use gparted live to partition the disk into 30gb NTFS, 4.5gb linux-swap and the remaining as ext4. However I got an error whenever it came to writing the file system NTFS and EXT4 both failed. From memory the error was Input/output error on read /dev/sda.

I then decided to just install Windows XP and during installation I deleted the partitions that gparted had tried to make and gave XP the whole drive. Everything installed fine.

Then when I tried to install Fedora I kept getting errors, sometimes it was telling me the drive was blank/virtual/etc and when I went to partition it showed 100% unallocated space. Then I tried to resize the existing partition, which it did, but again it showed 100% unallocated. The settings I tried where "Resize existing partition" "use blank space" "replace existing linux partition" "custom layout" etc.

I then tried to use gparted live to restore XP's full partition size, but it gave me an error again (I forgot to write it down, but I believe it was "Input/output error on read /dev/sda").

So I decided that I would just partition the whole HDD from the Fedora instal;, but leave 30gb unallocated for me to reinstall Win XP, however Fedora refused to let me partition the drive. I can't remember the error, but it might have been the same input/output error as before.

Today I decided to chuck in the towel. I wiped the drive with zeros using DBAN and started over. I used win XP partition manager to create a 30gb partition for itself, and to leave the rest unallocated. Everything installed and works. I then went to install Fedora, and although I'm not getting the error that I yesterday, it doesn't recognise the NTFS partition, and when I click "use free space" it insists that the whole HDD is free space and wants to wipe everything.

Summary:
- gparted live cd failed to partition drive (error: Input/output error on read /dev/sda)
- Windows XP installed and worked
- Fedora failed to recognise NTFS partition, thought drive was blank
- Fedora failed to completely repartition drive from scratch when told to (I think same error as gparted live)
- Gparted live cd failed to extend NTFS partition to take whole drive (error: Input/output error on read /dev/sda)
- Wiped HDD to zeros with DBAN
- Windows XP installed and works
- Fedora failed to recognise NTFS partition, thinks entire drive is unallocated space

Can anyone help me with this?

[EDIT]
- chkdsk run before the DBAN wipe found no faults
- tried booting fedora with nogpt to try repartitioning before the DBAN wipe, same error

[EDIT2]
- Now it keeps saying "no usable disks have been found" - but still boots into XP just fine

[tashirosgt]

Originally Posted by OtterNZ

I chucked my trusty Fedora 16 disk in an old computer of mine,

Was that disk the LiveCd? I think the place to begin is to get Linux booted from the LiveCD or a similar rescue disk. Then become root in a terminal and do

fdisk -l

(Use the letter "l", not then numeral 1)

Post the output. That may give us some indication of ihow Linux sees your hard drive.

How is the controller for the hard drive set in the motherboard BIOS? Is this an IDE hard drive? The controller isn't set to use some sort of RAID?

[OtterNZ]

Originally Posted by tashirosgt

Was that disk the LiveCd?

Yes. Installed multiple systems with it. In fact, this hard drive used to have Fedora 16 on it in another of my systems.

Originally Posted by tashirosgt

Then become root in a terminal and do

fdisk -l

Here it is:

[root@localhost liveuser]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders, total 156301488 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb023b023

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63    61432559    30716248+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Disk /dev/mapper/live-rw: 4294 MB, 4294967296 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 522 cylinders, total 8388608 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/mapper/live-rw doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/mapper/live-osimg-min: 4294 MB, 4294967296 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 522 cylinders, total 8388608 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/mapper/live-osimg-min doesn't contain a valid partition table

Originally Posted by tashirosgt

How is the controller for the hard drive set in the motherboard BIOS? ...The controller isn't set to use some sort of RAID?

You'll have to forgive me here, I only just picked up this old socket 939 motherboard with spare change recently, and I'm not familiar with it's BIOS set up.

The hard drive related options in BIOS are:

LBA/Large mode = auto (supported)
Block (multi-sector transfer) M = auto (16 sectors)
PIO mode = auto (4)
Async DMA mode = auto (multiword DMA-2)
Ultra DMA mode = auto (Ultra DMA-6)
SMART monitoring = auto (supported)
32bit data transfer = disabled (disabled)

All SATA ports are enabled.
Raid is disabled.
ACPI APIC support = enabled

Originally Posted by tashirosgt

Is this an IDE hard drive?

SATA. It is a Seagate Barracuda 80gb 7200.9

---------- Post added at 05:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:10 PM ----------

I've just done a reboot and run fdisk -l again without running the installer...and the output is different. There is no reference to /dev/sda, it starts at /dev/mapper/live-rw

---------- Post added at 06:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:12 PM ----------

Looks like it's fixed!

I tried a few more things, including going through the BIOS systematically trying things enabled or disabled and seeing if I could partition after that. On one of the menus in a different location to all the other RAID and IDE settings, was a little entry showing "Silicon Image Mode" which happens to be the little red RAID port on this board. It was set to RAID mode (other options were SATA2 mode and disabled).

Turns out that even though I had disabled every RAID setting in the RAID/IDE section of the BIOS, the fact that the Silicon Image RAID/SATA port was still set to RAID was stopping linux from partitioning and formatting a file system onto the drive.

At least I think that was the problem, because after the many hours I've spent on this I wasn't willing to click the back button in case it stopped working again!

If you don't mind, I will wait a day or two before making this as [SOLVED] just in case it turns out not to be fixed, and I need more help.

[george_toolan]

Maybe you should connect the drive to another sata port on your motherboard and then you can disable this additional Silicon Image chip for faster booting.

[OtterNZ]

Originally Posted by george_toolan

Maybe you should connect the drive to another sata port on your motherboard and then you can disable this additional Silicon Image chip for faster booting.

It always has been plugged into one of the normal SATA ports, and disabling the Silicon Image chip was what fixed my partitioning issue. That's why it took me so long to find, because it seemed totally unrelated since it wasn't being used.

Marking this as SOLVED since there seem to be no more problems.