Fedora 11 can't see a hard drive

[defex]

I've been trying to get Fedora 11 (x86_64, netinst) installed on my machine, but am having trouble with the hard drive selection and partitioning. This machine has 2 x 320GB hard drives. One for Windows, and one for Linux of course.

When I first tried the install, both hard drives were attached to the computer. I was expecting to see the drives seperately so that I could partition and install on only one of the drives, but device mapper kicked in and showed me a single 640GB long partition. Not very helpful in my case.

I decided to simply unplug the Windows drive so that fedora didn't see the two identical drives and so would not try to map them. However, with only the linux drive plugged in, the installer doesn't see it. There are no hard drives to select from in the installer.

As a test, I plugged in the windows drive solely and unplugged the linux drive, and low-and-behold, fedora sees the windows drive. This is getting slightly confusing at this point as both the hard drives are identical. I can't see why the installer would recognise one but not the other. Yet it recognises the extra 320GB of hard drive space if both drives are plugged in and device mapper tries to raid them. I tried the debian installer to see if it had the same problem, but it was able to see and install on this drive. I would have tried OpenSUSE as well but this computer doesn't have a DVD drive.


I haven't tried a "nodmraid" boot option yet, so I am going to try that tonight, but I'm interested to hear what the community thinks of this problem. Thanks.


System Specs:

DFI LANParty UT NF680i LT SLI-T2R
Intel Q6600
Corsair XMS2-800 2x2GB
2 x Seagate Barracuda 320GB

I've also had a 640GB plugged in that was detected fine (probably because dm didn't try to raid it being the odd hdd out) but has been removed while I'm troubleshooting the fedora install.

[defex]

I seem to be getting on top of this problem now. The hard drive seems to have metadata that indicates it is meant to be part of a striped array (how totally wrong that is). I believe formating the metadata only (quick format windows calls this) should get the drive working again.

An interesting point though, the nodmraid boot option didn't stop fedora from using dmraid. This seems like a bug in the software.

[defex]

Problem confirmed. The drive had metadata that indicated it was part of a raid, probably from when i used the hard drive in raid a couple of years ago, before dual booting with Windows.

Solution: After anaconda starts and before doing anything, goto alt+ctrl+f2.
Enter the following command:

dmraid -r -E /dev/sdx
(where x is the letter of the hard drive that you want to erase the raid metadata from)

It asks if you really want to delete the metadata. Select yes, then hit alt+ctrl+f6 to go back to the anaconda gui and continue the installation. There is no need to restart.

Anaconda was then able to see the disk in the installer, and install to it normally. Everyone (mostly me) is now happy, and who doesn't like being happy.

[YaKillaCJ]

Ide like to thank you. This is what I needed and worked right away. No hassle wit these instructions.
^_^

[MacDingus]

OMG!

This was driving me BoNkErS!

I'd have never thought to look for anything like that; yes, that was my problem too.

Now I too am happy!

[defex]

The fact that you are happy makes me happy as well.