weird partitioning problem

[imported_duey]

I just got a new Dell Dimension 8400 yesterday. I'm having some trouble setting up a dualboot with XP and Ubuntu Linux. On my previous computer I used Partition Magic 8's new operating system wizard and then installed linux without a problem.

On this computer I try to use the new operating system wizard and it gives me an error, "The selected disk contains one or more partitions which cannot be moved. To complete this task use the Operations menu rather than a wizard." So I used the operations menu and made my partition.

So then I move onto installing Linux. I get up to the partition setup and that's where I run into trouble. I get the "No usable physical partitions found" error.

I think all of this may be due to Dell locking the harddrive somehow to protect it's restore partition or something? I looked at the troubleshooter on Partition Magic 8 and it had this to say:

To use PartitionMagic with a SCSI hard disk

To use PartitionMagic with a SCSI hard disk, you must have a SCSI controller card that supports software Interrupt 13. Most SCSI controller cards let you enable software Interrupt 13 support in the BIOS through the card. If your SCSI controller card does not, contact the manufacturer to determine if your adapter can support software Interrupt 13. As a general rule, if FDISK cannot access the entire SCSI disk, PartitionMagic will be unable to access it too.

Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this? So far this has stumped me and all my friends. Thanks for any advice!

 

[drag]

Your dell dimension has a SCSI disk?

If you don't care about the information on the harddrive and you want to start over with a completely clean slate you can overwrite the entire harddrive zeros..

boot up with a knoppix cd or tomsbtrt disk and you go:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

were hda = you haddrive.. hda = primary master ide, hdb= primary slave, hdc = secondary master, hdd = secondary slave.
Then SATA disks can be hd* letters, or sometimes they show up as SCSI disks,, (I think that it's scsi is the new way..)

scsi is the same way, but it shows up like sda, sdb, sdc and so on so forth. There are some variations beyond that. (like the devfs way were you have /dev/scsi/* stuff full of directories and files)

Well anyways doing htat will overwrite the harddrive with zeros, destroying your MBR and any information the the disk, including partition informaiton. Escentially you get a clean start on repartition it.

If you have a 'restore partition' instead of a windows CD you don't want to do that though.

Occasionally I'd run into issue with dual booting like Lilo not being erased correctly by the Windows bootloader and such, and this cleans up stuff like that. Carefull with it though.

If you want to try something else knoppix comes with a 'qtparted' utility that can move around partitions and such. Maybe it will be more friendly. Don't know.

 

[imported_duey]

Hmmm, I'm not sure if it's SCSI, don't know how to check.

And I don't want to completely format the computer, I would like to dual boot.

 

[P0ldy]

Most likely SATA. I just got a Dell laptop with a 40GB SATA from Toshiba and it recognised it as SCSI on Gentoo. Throw in Knoppix or some live CD, it should tell you.

 

[bersl2]

SATA uses the SCSI protocol (as do many other storage device types, like USB external storage). Therefore SATA is subsumed by SCSI.

If it's a desktop and not a workstation, then it's a SATA disk. I mean, really... let's not turn this into another coming of the 4.2GHz P4 Dell thread in the CPU forum. :roll:

 

[imported_duey]

Originally posted by: bersl2
SATA uses the SCSI protocol (as do many other storage device types, like USB external storage). Therefore SATA is subsumed by SCSI.

If it's a desktop and not a workstation, then it's a SATA disk. I mean, really... let's not turn this into another coming of the 4.2GHz P4 Dell thread in the CPU forum. :roll:

Well, then do you have any idea why I can't partition the drive?

 

[P0ldy]

Did you make it a primary partition and not ext/logical? And what filesystem did you put on the partition.

 

[andyhrn]

Try "Acronis Direct Suit" for partitioning.It should work. I've had problem with "Partition Magic" in past.

 

[imported_duey]

Originally posted by: P0ldy
Did you make it a primary partition and not ext/logical? And what filesystem did you put on the partition.

Here's what I've tried:

1. ext2 partition
2. ext3 partition
3. unallocated partition
4. unformatted partition
5. no partition (80GB NTFS)

I will try that other program now.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

There may not be linux drivers for the SATA drive controller on your mobo, so the installer can't see the drive. If you can find out which controller it uses then you may be able to find some drivers for it, or you may need to change a BIOS setting to allow it to be read as a PATA drive (if Dell included that option).

Serial ATA (SATA) Linux status report