Unseen Toshiba Hard Drive

[Slacker]

Hey minty folks!

So I have downloaded 2 versions of Mint and succesfully am able to boot both the new mint4 xfce version as well as the regular mint 4 version with gnome successfully on my toshiba portege s100 .
The problem is when I go to dive into the hard drive installer neither version are able to see/mount my hard drive.
The installation won't get past the part where I get to play around with my existing windblows partition and recovery partition.

When the partition manager fires up I get nada! No hard drive seen.... so no hard drive install/dual boot setup or nada

Both live CD's run great and xfce version even fires up my wireless card and am able to surf etc. with no extra config...

While I was googling this problem for the past 48 hours or so I did come across a post somewhere about someone having to pass some extra parameters during boot in order to access the hard drive...but I lost the link.....


So if there's anyone out there that has used mint on a Toshiba S100 successfully and could help please post!
Thanks!

[Husse]

I think the recovery partition is to blame
It is non standard so the disk is considered corrupt by the installer and not shown (but probably seen)
Check the release notes for Daryna. At the end is a workaround for Dell with recovery partition. This may work for you too.
If not you may have to "be nasty" to MBR
You could try this from DOS

Code: Select all

LOCK C:
FDISK/MBR

You could do more to MBR but as that are really dangerous commands I wait with them

[Slacker]

It is non standard so the disk is considered corrupt by the installer and not shown (but probably seen)

Nope ....mint not seeing my partitions....I am bummed out
would really like to get it running on this toshiba... After the holidays I will get some more hard disk space, image entire drive, lose the recovery partition, and try again.....must have dual boot set-up

[Husse]

Yeah - the recovery partition can do a lot - and it's really useless for recovery too as you loose all your data if you use it. There are Toshiba satelite that run Mint, but this keeps me from trying Mint on my wifes Satelite....

[Slacker]

Ok holiday madness is over. I just deleted the recovery partition and now windblows sees it as another drive H, in this case. So I boot into liveCD environment as usual and everything works just fine until I hit INSTALL....
At this point I get to step4 after choosing the usual fluff. Timezone, Language, Keyboard.....and Gparted starts and NADA!
No Device Found....so I download and burn gparted live CD and it sees my devices....like this:
/dev/sda1 ntfs and /dev/sda2 ntfs I want to put mint on the /dev/sda2 ntfs partition (after formatting of course) and then put grub to mbr of dev/sda1
so that I can dual boot this sucker.....
Anyone have any Ideas why the heck gparted from installer on live cd refuses to find my devices?? (/dev/sda1 & /dev/sda2)

Edit: I tried the workaround for the dell deal, purging, cleaning and re-installing ubiquity using apt, but no luck same issue. No Devices Found

[Husse]

I find the gparted on the live CD a bit lacking - I've had some intriguing problems with it but solved them. However the next time I install I'll get into problems if I don't remove something first.... Enough
If you format /dev/sda2 can it be seen by the live CD?
If not I fear there is something in MBR that causes problems. I know how to solve that, but that's a solution that wipes the disk clean....

[Slacker]

When I format /dev/sda2 any recommendations on a type to use eg. fat32,ReiserFS, etc...?

[Husse]

Does not matter really as this is more of an experiment - FAT32 as this can be seen and used by both Linux and Windows without problems

[Slacker]

Thanks for all your help and patience with this Husse I really appreciate it.
Right now the partition in question is ntfs but I will try fat32 and see what happens, and post back.