[NTLUG:Discuss] Install Mdk 8.2, RH 7.3 - Hang - Huge HDD - BIOS

[Chris Cox]

On Saturday 25 May 2002 14:54, greenglow484 at juno.com wrote:
> Done some Google searching, also thru RH & Mdk sites/ lists;  no success.
>  Anyone got ideas?
>
> It's hdc, 3rd HDD.  It's a 60 Gig Western Digital.  My 1997 BIOS (sorry,
> no further patches available) doesn't know what to do with it, so have
> set it in BIOS / CMOS (IDE secondary master) to None.  Then, Window~1 95,
> 2000 & XP can see and deal with it fine.
...
> Now, neither RHat 7.3 nor Mdk 8.2 will even install.  The install routine
> hangs at trying to get partition info for hdc, and just won't do anything
> further.  No escape, Enter nor other keys work.  Ideas?  TIA

Do you have any error and/or startup messages that talk about the
drive (from a Linux point of view of course)?  I do not use RH/Mandrake,
but I will tell you that I recently installed a 40M HD on a pretty old box 
(97ish, one in which the BIOS could only see part of the drive) and I did
not have any problems (similar to the experiences you seemed to
have earlier)... weird... do not know what to tell you.

Do you know for sure that Linux is seeing the drive?  You said it
hangs reading the partition data... so I'm guessing that it identified
that you have an hdc drive.

As someone mentioned, perhaps the drive is bad... perhaps plugging
it into a different machine and zapping it (low-level format if you can)
the drive would help.... if other OS's on the same machine can see it,
you may be able to erase/format the drive under a different OS... at
least you would know if the drive works or not.... just some stabs in
the dark...