[NTLUG:Discuss] OT: HD manufacturer's utilities fail to see drive (was New Data Disk Errors)

[Robert Pearson]

On 5/17/07, Johnny Cybermyth <djcybermyth at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Has any ever bought a drive which was not recognized by the
> manufacturer's disk utilities?
>
> I bought a new Maxtor IDE hard drive from Fry's a few weeks ago for an
> older P4 HP Pavilion desktop.  When I installed the drive, I tried to do
> the initial format using the manufacturer's disk utilities, but it
> wouldn't see the drive.
>
> I checked all jumper settings, used two different 80 pin IDE cables, and
> reseated all cables, memory, and expansion cards.  No dice.
>
> So, I decided to move on and install the latest Ubuntu on the fresh
> drive.  Ubuntu detected the drive, partitioned it, and installed after a
> few false starts with what appeared to be bad burned install discs.
>
> Everything seems fine now.  I haven't done much with the machine yet,
> but I've booted it several times and have done some initial web surfing
> on it.
>
> Should I be worried?
>
> --Johnny

Yes!
Worried? Not as long as you found a work-a-round.
Chris's reply is good info.

My experience was with two identical Western Digital 80 GB ATA drives.
I was learning how to dual boot with two drives. Windows on one, Linux
on the other.
My use of GRUB kept screwing up the Windows drive somewhere in the MBR.

When the drive was screwed up the Western Digital utilities would not see it.
Some Linuxes would see it for installs, some wouldn't. Sometimes
Knoppix would see it and sometimes not. Sometimes Windows installer
would see it and sometimes not. When it was really bad not even the
BIOS would see it.

Restoring the MBR did not always fix the "being seen" problem. I
fought that problem for two years, silently.
I finally figured out how to properly install GRUB for my two drive
setup. It works fine and everything sees the drive.

When I move on to a new configuration that separates the drives I
expect to see the same problem. The fix is to find an OS installer
that will see the drive even though the BIOS does not. Sounds
impossible, Right?

Windows used to have a thing called NetBEUI. It would find everything
that was attached anywhere. Debian has something very similar so I
would guess that Ubuntu does also.

In my old SCSI days we only saw this problem if the disk vendor
signature was damaged or missing. Restoring the disk signature was
fairly simple. No one even talks about disk signatures any more.