[ale] Hardware question: BIOS not seeing my 500GB SATA for Kubuntu install

[JK]

One thing to try: boot from a Linux CD distro and see if it sees
the drive.  Linux requires BIOS support in order to get the boot
sector loaded and jump into GRUB or whatever, but once the
kernel takes over it does not use the BIOS at all -- it does
its own drive detection and manages the SATA interface itself.
This means that BIOS limitations on drive size are usually
irrelevant to Linux -- as long as there's SOME drive you
can boot from, Linux can use all the others.  (You could
probably even boot GRUB off a CD and then tell it which
internal SATA drive to boot from -- I think even GRUB does
its own disk management without bothering with the BOIS,
except to get the stage-1 loader into RAM.)

If a bootable Linux CD does NOT see the drive, then I would
think you have a motherboard issue.  Maybe the SATA interfaces
aren't enabled properly, or have a hardware failure of some
sort.  In the latter case, you're probably just screwed, and
there's a new MB in your future.  Or if you have a free PCI
slot you could maybe spring for a PCI SATA interface card.

-- JK


Tim Watts wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> I'm trying to replace a fried 120GB drive with a 500GB drive on a system I 
> bought from Monarch circa 2004. However, the BIOS screen doesn't see the 
> drive at all (and, of course, the Kubuntu installer doesn't either). 
> 
> By "doesn't see it" I mean that as the system boots and scans for SCSI 
> devices, I hit the Tab key to enter the RAID User Screen and when it 
> displays, both channels show "No Drive". I have it connected same way the 
> 120GB drive was (power & data cables); but no jumpers as none of them seem 
> appropriate for my needs according to the manual.
> 
> Both drives are WD models. I've already exchanged the drive once at Best Buys 
> so I have a hard time believing I got 2 bad devices in a row. Plus they were 
> able to see it at the store when mounted in their USB harness.
> 
> Is it possible that the drive is just too big for the BIOS to handle? Even if 
> so, I would think that at least it could detect its presense.
> 
> Any ideas what's going on?
> 
> Thanks for your time.
> 
> 


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