help with hardware needed

[Curulin]

First of all, I'm new to Linux, but I want to give it a try, so please treat me as a stupid newbie.
I bought myself a new mainboard and a new (second) harddisc.
I wish to use both Linux (Ubuntu) and Windows with my new mainboard, so I need to format my harddiscs to partition them.
Now here's the problem.
While my Bios settings tell me that I have a primary master and a secondary master harddisc, Windows (running with my old mainboard) does not reckognize my new harddisc (the secondary master).
So I tried to see if Knoppix reckognizes my new harddisc, but I'm not sure if it does. There are some devices visible with no contents.
Now my questions.
1. How do I find out which device is which? Is there a way to show e.g. the brand name (Maxtor in this case)?
2. Is it possible to format a harddisc with Knoppix?
3. Is it possible to partition a harddisc while using Knoppix?

[Harry Kuhman]

First of all, you'll get more help with more specific subject lines, like actually trying to convey something about the problem. Including that you are a newbie doesn't really help and doesn't tell us anything about the problem. See the sticky post near the top of this forum titled ON POSTING: FORUMS and SUBJECT LINES (http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16574) and also see my stock answer #7 (http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/User:Harry_Kuhman). In addition, you get better results if you pick the proper forum for your post. In your case you seem to have accurately defined the problem as hardware (too many people would lump anything Knoppix related in hardware because Knoppix runs on hardware, but you problem does indeed seem hardware related and the subject line you used reflects that, so why would you not post it in the hardware forum?).

I generally don't try to answer "newbie" subject ine posts at all before the poster goes back and edits the subject line, but since you at least used the hardware term I'll try a quick answer, still, you should really edit that subject line. No more responses from me until you do.


1. How do I find out which device is which? Is there a way to show e.g. the brand name (Maxtor in this case)?
All hard drives I've ever seen have a lable on them that ID's the manufacturer and model number and includes other info, including a serial number and usually date of manufacturer. Depending on the brand this may contain other info including jumpering information and/or capacity. If the label has been removed you can still get drive infrmation electronically from a drive (if it is working), but I would certainly never pay money for a drive where this label has been removed or defaced, it's likely a bad or stolen drive. Your BIOS should ID the drive if the label is unreadable, assuming that you hooked the drive up properly. The drive maker website should give you jumpering and other information that you mght need. I'm not sure what you mean by "which device it is", if you mean the name that you reference it through Linux that depends on the type of interface and where you hook it up (which IDE intercafe and if it's master or slave). The first hard drive on a parallel IDE interface that is configured as master (either by the master jumper or by cable select) is hda, others are hdb, hdc and so on. Putting the hard drive on the second IDE interface and the CD or DVD drive on the primary IDE interface may confuse this.


2. Is it possible to format a harddisc with Knoppix?
Well, no, you don't format a hard disk, you format a hard disk partition. Knoppix can format a hard disk partition, but should be used to format Linux type partitions. If you want a Windows partition (NTFS or one of the FAT partitions) then it really should be formatted by Windows, or for FAT by DOS or Windows. And you'll have to do step 3 first, so your steps are out of order. And there is no such thing as harddisc. Disc is used to refer to optical data storage, such as a CD or DVD. Disk is used to refer to magnetic data storage. So disk means a magnetic hard disk and disc means an optical device.


3. Is it possible to partition a harddisc while using Knoppix?
Yup, it is. It's also possible to seriously damage your partition table with these tools, as we have seen here many times. So I'm not going to rush to point you to the tools to do this without a better understanding of what you think you want to do. If you are planning on installing Ubuntu (a much better choice than trying to install Knoppix), I would expect that the Ubuntu installer would go into a disk format dialog at install time (Debian certainly does) and give you options including one to use an entire drive (another option is to manually partition yourself but you shouldn't need this option if Ubuntu is willing to erase a drive and partition and format it at install time). Just be very very very sure that the drive you tell it to use is not the one that has Windows on it, but rather is the second drive.

Why you used the term does not reckognize my new harddisc (the secondary master) in your post is a mystery to me. There are some hardware configurations that would let you use a secondary hard drive as a second master, but in most typical cases two hard drives are put into a system connected to the same drive cable with the first being the master and the other be a "slave" (not a master), and the second IDE interface is used for a CD and maybe a DVD drive. In light of everything else I'm guessing that you're not hardware heavy and you likely should stick with that approach.

[Curulin]

As to 1. you misunderstood me.
On my Knoppix desktop I have several devices named hda1, hda2, hda3, hdb, etc.
Mounting and opening them shows me their contents, one is my hard disk, one is my dvd player, etc.
2 of them have no contents, so I'm not sure if one of them is my new Maxtor hard disk or not.
It's fresh from the shop with label and everything. The Windows hardware assistant doesn't find it so I want so see if Knoppix does.

I've already secured all my important files and data on a dvd, so whatever I do now there's no risk of losing anything.
When I'm done I want to have Ubuntu and Windows XP on my old hard disk and after starting the computer I want to be asked if I want tu run Ubuntu or Windows this session.
I'm not sure about the best way to proceed however.

[Harry Kuhman]

As to 1. you misunderstood me.
On my Knoppix desktop I have several devices named hda1, hda2, hda3, hdb, etc.
Mounting and opening them shows me their contents, one is my hard disk, one is my dvd player, etc.
2 of them have no contents, so I'm not sure if one of them is my new Maxtor hard disk or not.
I'm still misunderstanding. Do you really have a desktop icon for hdb, rather than a desktop icon for hdb1?
None of the icons should be for your hard disk. They should be for partitions on your hard disk. While you could have hda1, hda2 and hda3, this would be extremely unlikely for a Windows system; the partitions for your windows disk would have most likely been hda1, hda5, hda6 and maybe more beyond hda6. all hda prtitions are partitions on the same hard drive. hda1 is the first physical partition. But Winwows generally adds extra partitions as logical drives inside an extended partition, and these would show up as hda5, hda6 and so on, not hda2 or hda3. If you really have hda2 and hda3 then a lot more info is needed. One reason that you might have an hda2 is some OEM who hid a "recovery volume" on your hard disk (a dirty trick that wasts a lot of valuable disk space rather than having the OEM supply a 5 cent DVD of the recovery files instead). But I can't account for why you would have a hda2 and a hda3 on a pure Windows system (fine for Linux or systems with multiple OSs on them, but very strange for windows). hdb should be the second IDE drive, but it should not show up as a desktop icon; only partitions on it should show up, if it is partitioned at all, and these should be hdb1 and perhaps other hdbx numbers. If hdb is showing up it would be something I have no experience with.

Thanks for changing the subject line, but I was expecting something more specific, like "help in IDing Linux partitions" or "help in partitioning and formating" rather than a generic vegue reference to hardware. The better your subject line the better your chance of getting good feedback.

Cold boot your system and go into the BIOS (often by hitting del at boot time, but different for a few OEMs who insist on making this harder to find, see your computer manual if del doesn't work). What does the BIOS tell you about the hard drives? It will just give hard drive info, not partition info.

What flavor of Windows are you running? Telling you how to do things in windows depends on the version; they changed a lot between 98 and xp.