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#1 2009-03-03 06:24:21

dagnasty
Member
Registered: 2009-03-03
Posts: 8

Mysterious Unallocated space

Hi all,

Long time Debian user considering switching to Arch.  I have recently built a new PC and have ran into this crazy problem where something is registering as an 8gb unallocated area.  This poses a big problem with installation because I cannot properly partition.  My drives are as such

sda - Windows(0,0), Gnu/Linux(0,1)
sdb - just storage

and this is the way I have always done it.  I removed an installation of Debian but never encountered this problem with that particular installation. 

When I booted up the installer it showed that sda was 8gb (this moved the windows/linux drive to sdb and then the storage at sdc)

When I booted up Gparted it showed the unallocated 8gb at sdc.  I assure you this is not the cause of a thumb drive or any other external device.  I have a feeling that my dvd drive is the culprate because it mounts at /dev/sdc when I booted the disk.  This does not make sense to me in the least, the only other thing I thought was a possibility was my RAM because I have 8GB of it but that wasn't the case either.  I am utterly stumped and could use some guidance from some experienced users.  All of my unallocated space on sda which is set aside for linux is accounted for (i.e. sum of Windows + unallocated = drive capacity).  Here are some general specs -

Asus P5q Pro, Q6600, 2 1.5TB Seagate drives.

thanks wink

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#2 2009-03-03 20:55:37

ataraxia
Member
From: Pittsburgh
Registered: 2007-05-06
Posts: 1,553

Re: Mysterious Unallocated space

Do a "dmesg | scsi" (from the installer) and you'll probably see some brand names for your disk devices. (Yes, even if they're not SCSI.) Or just look at the surrounding output in dmesg and see it if comes clear to you.

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#3 2009-03-03 23:51:24

lilsirecho
Veteran
Registered: 2003-10-24
Posts: 5,000

Re: Mysterious Unallocated space

My experience with unallocated space has been in raid arrays, in my case raid0.

This is due to the fact that they are not formatted for separate drives but are ID'ed by the raid array, in my case mdadm md1.

This may give you a clue as to why you have an unallocated 8GB..I don't mean that the raid array is your case but the unallocated means no filesystem assigned.

This could be due to install limits applied to large drives but I have none to inspect for such.

Good hunting!


Prediction...This year will be a very odd year!
Hard work does not kill people but why risk it: Charlie Mccarthy
A man is not complete until he is married..then..he is finished.
When ALL is lost, what can be found? Even bytes get lonely for a little bit!     X-ray confirms Iam spineless!

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#4 2009-03-04 00:08:54

bernarcher
Forum Fellow
From: Germany
Registered: 2009-02-17
Posts: 2,281

Re: Mysterious Unallocated space

What is the output of
parted --list


To know or not to know ...
... the questions remain forever.

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#5 2009-03-04 01:09:13

dagnasty
Member
Registered: 2009-03-03
Posts: 8

Re: Mysterious Unallocated space

ok, searching through dmesg didnt reveal much because it was strangley showing up in different /dev locations.  Even with all of my drives removed it would still show up.  It was also tuning in at SCSI4, and when trying to partition it for experimental purposes it failed with some I/O failure.  I feel as if I made some 3AM mistake and couldnt retrace my steps.  When all of the drives were connected, parted would list it @ /dev/sdc.  That was the same device as my cd/dvd drive.  This seems pretty far fetched that I could turn this drive into a "hard disk" but it is a sata drive so who knows.  I would have tried the installer from a flash drive and remove the sata cable from the dvd drive, but didnt think of it until after this.  SO, I actually fixed it but sadly I don't know what I did wrong in the first place.  I kept thinking that it was some obvious logical error but there was no clue availible.  I "fixed" this by updating my BIOS to the newer version.  I screwed up some over clocking related things so having this fix both of my problems is a win-win.  Thanks for all of the quick replies and helpful comments and I will modify this post in a few hours to SOLVED once I confirm this problem is done and over with


Now to actually install the system haha

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