HDD visible but not Mountable

[is_Ryan]

I am currently in the process of installing Linux Mint 17.3 64-bit cinnamon version on my computer. The Linux installer does not register my hard Drive as a place where it can install the OS. I can see my hard drive in the computer window, it is a WDC WD10EADS-22M2B0 model hard drive that I recently used DBAN to clean off the previous OS, however it is not mountable. "Can't mount file" it says. I've done some research and learned that this could be the result of corrupt partitioning, but I'm not sure what that is or how to fix it.

the drive shows up in BIOS
I have 16 GB ram that the flash desktop is running on

I've read another topic that gave me a bunch of diagnostic commands for problems similar to this, hopefully it will help you get a handle on my problem and what i can do to fix it, as follows.

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inxi -pou

Partition: ID-1: / size: 7.9G used: 115M (2%) fs: overlay dev: /dev/cow
uuid: N/A
Unmounted: No unmounted partitions detected

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udisks --mount /dev/sda

Mount failed: Not a mountable file system

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udisks --show-info /dev/sda

Showing information for /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/sda
native-path: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:11.0/ata1/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/block/sda
device: 8:0
device-file: /dev/sda
presentation: /dev/sda
by-id: /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD10EADS-22M2B0_WD-WCAV5E030531
by-id: /dev/disk/by-id/wwn-0x50014ee2af4f21cb
detected at: Sat 21 May 2016 04:02:47 PM UTC
system internal: 1
removable: 0
has media: 1 (detected at Sat 21 May 2016 04:02:47 PM UTC)
detects change: 0
detection by polling: 0
detection inhibitable: 0
detection inhibited: 0
is read only: 0
is mounted: 0
mount paths:
mounted by uid: 0
presentation hide: 0
presentation nopolicy: 0
presentation name:
presentation icon:
automount hint:
size: 1000204886016
block size: 512
job underway: no
usage: raid
type: promise_fasttrack_raid_member
version:
uuid:
label:
drive:
vendor: ATA
model: WDC WD10EADS-22M2B0
revision: 01.00A01
serial: WD-WCAV5E030531
WWN: 50014ee2af4f21cb
detachable: 0
can spindown: 1
rotational media: Yes, unknown rate
write-cache: enabled
ejectable: 0
adapter: Unknown
ports:
similar devices:
media:
compat:
interface: ata
if speed: (unknown)
ATA SMART: Updated at Sat 21 May 2016 04:03:18 PM UTC
overall assessment: Good
===============================================================================
Attribute Current|Worst|Threshold Status Value Type Updates
===============================================================================
raw-read-error-rate 200|200| 51 good 0 Pre-fail Online
spin-up-time 212|190| 21 good 5.4 secs Pre-fail Online
start-stop-count 99| 99| 0 n/a 1958 Old-age Online
reallocated-sector-count 200|200|140 good 0 sectors Pre-fail Online
seek-error-rate 100|253| 0 n/a 0 Old-age Online
power-on-hours 56| 56| 0 n/a 1364.1 days Old-age Online
spin-retry-count 100|100| 0 n/a 0 Old-age Online
calibration-retry-count 100|100| 0 n/a 0 Old-age Online
power-cycle-count 99| 99| 0 n/a 1946 Old-age Online
power-off-retract-count 200|200| 0 n/a 145 Old-age Online
load-cycle-count 1| 1| 0 n/a 777739 Old-age Online
temperature-celsius-2 108| 96| 0 n/a 39C / 102F Old-age Online
reallocated-event-count 200|200| 0 n/a 0 Old-age Online
current-pending-sector 200|200| 0 n/a 0 sectors Old-age Online
offline-uncorrectable 200|200| 0 n/a 0 sectors Old-age Offline
udma-crc-error-count 200|200| 0 n/a 0 Old-age Online
multi-zone-error-rate 200|200| 0 n/a 0 Old-age Offline

let me know if you need any more information

[Mute Ant]

Linux doesn't mount drives, it mounts file systems. Just use gparted to give the drive a new partition table and make the partitions you want...or run the installer and let it loose on the whole drive.

This is odd-and-unwanted. It may be the reason for the installer ignoring the drive...
"usage: raid
type: promise_fasttrack_raid_member"

[is_Ryan]

Downloading GParted now. in the Linux installer what does it mean when it says "No root file system is defined" upon me pressing the install now button, will that be something i can fix within GParted?

[austin.texas]

Downloading GParted now. in the Linux installer what does it mean when it says "No root file system is defined" upon me pressing the install now button, will that be something i can fix within GParted?

No, that is a requirement of the installation process.
You pick the partition you want to install to.
Click the Change button.
Chose ext4 format, and / (for the root partition), or /home (if it is a separate /home partition).

installScreenshot.png

[is_Ryan]

Pressing the change button crashed the linux installer, here is the report

traceback(Most recent call last):
File “/usr/lib/ubiquity/plugins/ubi-partman.py”, line 1281, in on_partition_list_edit_activate
self.partman_diologue(devpart, partition, create=false)
File “/usr/lib/ubiquity/plugin.py”, line 48, in wrapper
return target(self, *args, **kwargs)
file “/user/lib/ubiquity/plugins/ubi-partman.py, line 871, in partman_diolog
if('can_resize' not in partition or not partition['can_resize'] or
TypeError: argument of type 'NoneType' is not Iterable

it seems there are issues with the Installers ability to create and resize partitions, I don't how to fix this.

[austin.texas]

Check your downloaded .iso file for the correct md5sum.
In your file manager, right-click on the folder your .iso file is in → Open In Terminal
In the terminal, enter:

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md5sum linuxmint-17.3-cinnamon-dvd-64bit.iso

That will give you a long number which you can compare with the official number at https://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=204

Re-do your Mint USB or DVD.

Your results of udisks --show-info /dev/sda should show (but does not show) the Partition Table information - either msdos or gpt

partition table:
scheme: gpt

Did you ever create a partition table?

[is_Ryan]

The md5 number was an exact match, I burned that ISO on an empty disk and booted from it with the same results in the installer as the first dvd.

yes I used GParted to create a msdos partition table

[is_Ryan]

some other errors I ran into during boot up, not sure if they are trivial or not.

[ 6.135202] nouveau E[ PGRAPH] [0000:01:00.0] failed to load fuc409c
[ 6.140308] nouveau E[ PFIFO] [0000:01:00.0] unsupported engines 0x00000001
[ 6.140467] nouveau E[ DRM] failed to create kernel channel, -22

[austin.texas]

I have never used DBAN on a hard drive, so I don't know what it does. Google tells me that MBR/partition table problems do occur with DBAN.
Please try switching to GPT partitioning. I suspect that might work better, since it is a more stable protocol than msdos. I recently changed my 500GB drive from msdos to GPT.
Use gparted. Open the Device menu > New Partition Table > gpt > APPLY
Then right-click on the unallocated space > New (partition)
Create a new partition of 1 or 2 MB (that is MB, not GB)
leave it Unformatted

bios_grub1.jpg

Click the APPLY button.
Right-click on the new 1MB partition > Manage Flags > bios_grub > APPLY

Now you can create the rest of the partitions you want - a swap partition, root (/) partition, etc.

sdaPartitions.png

Then post the result of

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sudo parted --list

[Mr.October]

In the first post I see that the disk is "only" 7.9GB in size. I wonder if that is enough to install MInt on it. When I look at my / disk I see it uses 9GB.
When you also try to setup other partitions as well it does not leave enough space left for the OS. I assume that is why you get the message Mint can not install on the disk.

[austin.texas]

In the first post I see that the disk is "only" 7.9GB in size. I wonder if that is enough to install MInt on it. When I look at my / disk I see it uses 9GB.

That is the info on the 8GB USB drive.

[is_Ryan]

mint@mint ~ $ sudo parted --list
Model: ATA WDC WD10EADS-22M (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 5243kB 4194kB bios_grub
2 5243kB 10.5GB 10.5GB linux-swap(v1) Swap
3 10.5GB 377GB 367GB ext4 Root


Warning: Unable to open /dev/sr0 read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sr0
has been opened read-only.
Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!

I think /sev/sr0 is my disk reader

[austin.texas]

I think /sev/sr0 is my disk reader

You are right about that.
The partitioning looks functional.
Do you intend to install to one big root partition? ( 367GB)
Or did you already install successfully?

Generally, it is helpful to make the root partition (where the OS is installed) about 20 to 30GB. You can see that in my screenshot. (20GB is fine for most people.)
Then you create a big partition to use either as /home or a /data partition.
That makes it easier to install a new operating system (like Mint 18, for example), because you are only installing to the root partition, and the /data partition can be preserved without altering it.
Otherwise, to install a new OS, you would have to back up everything, install, then restore all the personal data.

EDIT: let me add one little tip on GPT partitioning. GPT stores the partition table information at the beginning of the drive - just as msdos does. However, GPT also stores a backup copy of the partition table at the end of the drive. So when you create your final partition, don't run it all the way to the end. Leave 1MB (unallocated) for the backup copy of the partition table.

[is_Ryan]

I'll try that partitioning scheme, but having ruled out that my partitioning table is corrupted, I don't know how to solve this problem.

this is the steps in the installer, as I go through them, the crash report is in my reply above. It skips the installation type page and goes automatically to the manual partitioning.





Which is empty and un-editable despite my efforts using GParted

[austin.texas]

If the installation program is still not seeing the hard drive, there has to be a problem with what DBAN did.
Gparted had no trouble. Right? So there is no problem with the cables or connections or the hard drive itself.
Did you ever enable some sort of MBR virus protection in your BIOS?
Is Secure Boot enabled?

You can clean off the first sectors of your sda drive with dd

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dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M count=10

I have used that command to successfully fix USB drives which would not cooperate.

Then you would have to start over and create a partition table again.

[is_Ryan]

No dice on that, is it possible that there is an elevated the protection level or some equivalent function of my HDD so that the installer doesn't have permission to make it's necessary changes? that would explain the installer crash if such an issue were the problem. I ran the installer for this linux mint version prior to wiping the hard drive of it's previous OS (Windows 10), and had the same exact issue.

[Mute Ant]

http://www.dban.org/

Limited hardware support (e.g. no RAID dismantling)

Two methods of resetting a drive are discussed near the end of this page...
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archive/i ... 71742.html
...and a third here...
http://djlab.com/2013/07/removing-raid-metadata/
Personally I would shred the whole drive to be sure it's wiped and tested-writable all the way through.