Arch Linux

phazer11

Member

Registered: 2010-01-19

Posts: 20

Hard Drive Issues

Hello everyone I need some help I'm having a really weird issue.

Ok I just got a 1.5 TB Hard Drive installed Windows 7 on it and tried to install Arch 64 Bit I know the processor is fine. But before the installer reaches the root login screen it pops up with an error.

ata1: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)

Then when I get the installer running and go to manually partititon hard drives I recieve the message.

Available Disks:

With nothing else on it. Then I go to OTHER for the Disc Select option

And it asks me for the device which I wish to partition and nothing I enter seems to work.
Now I've tried adding noapic with no luck I also tried adding apic=off with no luck.
I've looked at the wiki and even resorted to irc but no luck.

I'd appreciate any help.

Last edited by phazer11 (2010-01-22 00:04:46)

phazer11

Member

Registered: 2010-01-19

Posts: 20

Re: Hard Drive Issues

Anybody?.... At all... Sweatdrop

Aedit

Member

Registered: 2009-10-29

Posts: 138

Re: Hard Drive Issues

Hmm, odd. Perhaps check a few things like the SATA settings in BIOS (set to IDE or AHCI or RAID ?) and which ata modules do get loaded when you boot the installer. I.e. before running the arch setup do "dmesg | grep -i ata", "lsmod | grep ata", "fdisk -l". If you have any other ATA optical or hard disks disconnect them. Windows does boot ok I presume. Which motherboard do you have?

Last edited by Aedit (2010-01-27 01:04:18)

phazer11

Member

Registered: 2010-01-19

Posts: 20

Re: Hard Drive Issues

Uh I use XFX 750a SLi Motherboard I had windows in a two HDD boot select with XP on one HDD and Windows 7 on the other and yes they worked. I disconnected the Windows XP drive before posting this and it changed nothing. I finally changed the ports the drive was in as windows wouldn't boot after I had tried installing arch and once I switched sata ports windows booted so idk what's going on. I'll run that command when I get a chance. When do I enter that command? Before or after selecting Boot Linux Live CD? And if before boot from Live CD then how should I enter it? Thanks

Last edited by phazer11 (2010-01-30 16:49:34)

Aedit

Member

Registered: 2009-10-29

Posts: 138

Re: Hard Drive Issues

I suggested 3 commands. You can run them after you boot up the Arch installer disk, before you begin Step 3 (http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beg … stallation) from the Beginners Guide . That should tell us whether your HDD is detected properly. Is there any note about which of the 6 SATA ports you should use in the motherboard manual?

Did you check the BIOS setup settings? I think under Advanced --> Onboard Devices you see something like:
OnChip P-ATA Controller
OnChip S-ATA Controller
SATA Mode Select

Windows can sometimes be confused if you try to boot it from the wrong number disk (but it can be fixed if necessary). You have your data backed up I hope...

Last edited by Aedit (2010-01-30 18:29:29)

phazer11

Member

Registered: 2010-01-19

Posts: 20

Re: Hard Drive Issues

Well the drive I want to install to is the Windows 7 drive which is larger than the Windows XP drive by about 500GB and newer by 6-10 months.
About the BIOS I'll look in just a minute. And I do not see anything about the SATA ports in the manual so far but I could be missing it.

phazer11

Member

Registered: 2010-01-19

Posts: 20

Re: Hard Drive Issues

KK the Onboard Devices Settings are

PCIE Training [Gen2 if supported]
Lan1 Controller [Auto]
USB 1.1 Controller [Enabled]
USB 2.0 Controller [Enabled]
AZALIA AUDIO [Internal codec + E]
Onchip P-ATA [Enabled]
Onchip A-ATA [Enabled]
SATA Mode select [SATA Mode]
Onboard Floppy Controller [Enabled]
Serial Port1 Address [3F8/IRQ4]
Serial Port2 Address [Disabled]
HDMI/DVI [Auto]

Whenever I disconnect one of the drives there is a disk read error due to the boot selector so I'll see what I can do about that.

Last edited by phazer11 (2010-01-30 21:20:13)

Aedit

Member

Registered: 2009-10-29

Posts: 138

Re: Hard Drive Issues

Those BIOS settings look fine. Which "boot selector" do you mean? Your CD/DVD drive should be top of the BIOS boot order list (recheck after any change). Are all 6 cables (3 power cables and 3 data cables) ok? You _should_ be able to install with everything connected -- I only mentioned disconnecting anything to reduce complexity and because there are very rare reports of problematic SATA devices causing errors (unlikely).

Edit: ahh, there are other reports around the net of the same problem with exactly that motherboard. Someone reported success after adding pci=nomsi to the installer's kernel boot command. If that helps get the installer working then you may also need it in your final installation's /boot/grub/menu.lst.

Last edited by Aedit (2010-01-31 14:57:10)

phazer11

Member

Registered: 2010-01-19

Posts: 20

Re: Hard Drive Issues

Ah interesting. Uh I'm using the built in Windows Bootloader thing (what ever it's called)
Alright I'll try adding pci=nomsi tot he kernel boot. I do that by pressing 'E' before selecting boot from live cd right?

Aedit

Member

Registered: 2009-10-29

Posts: 138

Re: Hard Drive Issues

Yes, press e (for edit) and append pci=nomsi to the line which begins with kernel. And then press enter and b to boot. Like the example in Step 2 here:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beg … _Installer
(but pci=nomsi instead of vga=773)

phazer11

Member

Registered: 2010-01-19

Posts: 20

Re: Hard Drive Issues

Alrighty I'll try that then. I'll see if I can do it now.
Alright so far so good I can get the manually partition hard drive tool to see both HDDs

Available Disks:
/dev/sda: 953869 MiB ( 931 GiB )
/dev/sdb : 1430799 MiB ( 1397 GiB )

Last edited by phazer11 (2010-01-31 19:04:26)

Aedit

Member

Registered: 2009-10-29

Posts: 138

Re: Hard Drive Issues

Looks good

phazer11

Member

Registered: 2010-01-19

Posts: 20

Re: Hard Drive Issues

Ok problem... I just remembered last time I installed this I had three partitions on a hard drive two were blank ( a recovery and one for what I thought would be Windows XP ) one was windows I have only one partition on the current drive. Being sdb1 Part type Primary Size 1500299.30 MiB
So how exactly would I partiton it so that I have a 10 GB /Root partition a 4 GB Swap partition and a 40 GB /Home partition?
Any ideas?

Last edited by phazer11 (2010-01-31 19:18:07)

Aedit

Member

Registered: 2009-10-29

Posts: 138

Re: Hard Drive Issues

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beg … Hard_Drive
Use GParted perhaps? There's a live CD -- hopefully you can also boot that with pci=nomsi.

Resize sdb1 (ntfs right?) to be smaller, and then create 3 new ones for root (/), swap and /home.

phazer11

Member

Registered: 2010-01-19

Posts: 20

Re: Hard Drive Issues

Make it smaller how? I'd prefer using the Arch Install CD to do everything as I can better use it. The options I have are Bootable, Delete, Help, Maximize, Print, Quit, Type, Units, Write

Yes Windows uses NTFS

phazer11

Member

Registered: 2010-01-19

Posts: 20

Re: Hard Drive Issues

Well I think part of the problem is it doesn't show the free space like.
http://home.arcor.de/Langeland/9.png
It only shows the sda1 Primary NTFS 1500299.30 MB no free space thing like above.
I ran fdisk again before the setup

Windows XP Drive
Disk /dev/sda : 1000.2 GB
/dev/sda1
boot =*
start =1
end = 121601
ID 7
FS NTFS

Windows 7 Drive
/dev/sbd1 : 1500.3 GB
boot =
start = 1
end = 182401
ID 7
FS NTFS

Last edited by phazer11 (2010-01-31 20:35:59)

Aedit

Member

Registered: 2009-10-29

Posts: 138

Re: Hard Drive Issues

Yes Windows uses NTFS

Or FAT32...

It's not showing free space because you don't have any. Perhaps this will help http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=85705 . Read the BG and http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Win … _Dual_Boot .
Edit: Also http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GParted and http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gparted-Live .

Edit2: GParted: From the last screenshot on this page http://gparted.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php  I think you can see that if you press Tab you will be able to edit the boot options and append pci=nomsi.

A discussion of how to partition disks doesn't really belong in the kernel & hardware forum. You might want to start another thread if you still need help.

On your original problem, I suggest after you are done with installation you post the output of "dmesg", "lspci -nn" and look into whether the underlying problem has been fixed in the latest kernel or latest bios version.

Last edited by Aedit (2010-01-31 22:31:58)