openSuse 11.2 does not see my SATA3 hard disk / partitions

Hello everyone. I got a new hard drive yesterday, a Seagate Baracuda XT 2000GB SATA3. I’m running it on the SATA3 jmicron chip in AHCI mode, and Opensuse 11.2 is having issues with using this hard drive properly.

The hard drive seems to take a while to detect, for one thing. After it is detected however, I am told I have no hard disk that can be used for installation. The exact message is:

“No hard disks were found for the installation. Please check your hardware!”

After that, I’m told the partitioner can’t read the partitions on my hard drive properly:

*"The partitioning on disk /dev/sda is not readable by the partitioning tool parted, which is used to change the partition table.

You can use the partitions on disk /dev/sda as they are. You can format them and assign mount points to them, but you cannot add, edit, resize, or rename partitions from that disk with this tool."*

I partitioned the new hard drive under Windows, with a partitioning tool called Partition Wizard (free / home version). I’m not sure if hard drives partitioned with this tool are not recognized by OpenSuse’s partitioner, or if it’s something else.

I already installed Windows on this hard drive, so I can’t delete all the partitions I have so far and start all over again (I’m keeping my system a dual-boot between Windows 7 and openSuse 11.2). What can I do so OpenSuse will see and modify my partitions? If it is the partitioning not being understood, is there some sort of tool that can make the partition table of the hard disk linux-readable? (a free Windows program that could do such)

Any help would be very appreciated, if anyone knows what can be done. Thank you.

Check your bios and windows settings to see if you haven’t got it set up as raid or some other funny setting.
If the bios detects it, so should linux.

Yo could go back to the management console in windows and use the windows disk partitioner to set up the partitions first (say 20GB for root, 2GB swap and whatever /home size) and then install to these.
Also, check the partition setup - windows tools only create extended partitions if you tell them to.

It is detected correctly in BIOS, and it’s not set in RAID but AHCI. I get this issue even if I run it in IDE mode, or on a non-jmicron SATA2 port.

Good idea to try the Windows partitioner, I forgot it actually has one. I decided to wipe the hard disk and reinstall everything again, with a better partitioner, so I’ll see if this still happens after.

OK. After completely wiping my HDD clean using a 5 hour wiping tool then running the installer again, I noticed neither openSuse 11.2 nor openSuse Live KDE 11.3 Milestone4 see my hard disk.

I then partitioned it using the Windows 7 partitioning tool. Booting the live 11.3 sees and mounts my ntfs partitions, but the partitioning tool and 11.2 installer give me the same errors described in the first post.

So my final thought is that openSuse has an issue with my HDD. If the reason isn’t sata3, it may be that it’s a 2TB perhaps. Could it be possible that openSuse might not understand such big hard drives yet?

I’m certain my HDD is not in any way damaged. I just got it and Windows 7 as well as all other files work like a charm, so there’s clearly nothing wrong with it imo.

Has anyone else managed to install openSuse 11.2 on a SATA3 HDD and / or a +2TB one?

is it possible that your openSUSE install media is damaged?

becuase it sounds a lot like you have a corrupted install disk…

  1. did you get your install image from
    http://software.opensuse.org/112/en ? (then where?)
  2. did you check the md5sum of the downloaded iso?
  3. burn the disk as slow as you can?
  4. use good media?
  5. do this http://tinyurl.com/yajm2aq before install attempt?

if you answered “no” (or “don’t know”) to any of those then see the
following cites, and if we can help further, please ask because we
want you to be successful:
http://en.opensuse.org/Download_Help
http://tinyurl.com/yhf65pv
http://tinyurl.com/ycly3eg


DenverD (Linux Counter 282315)
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
posted via NNTP w/TBird 2.0.0.23 | KDE 3.5.7 | openSUSE 10.3
2.6.22.19-0.4-default SMP i686
AMD Athlon 1 GB RAM | GeForce FX 5500 | ASRock K8Upgrade-760GX |
CMedia 9761 AC’97 Audio

MirceaKitsune wrote:

hmmmm…this cite: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php?topic=1599.0
indicates he can’t use SATA2 and 3 together…

are you using RAID 0? (i ask because i think i read that Linux and
RAID 0 don’t work and play well together…google it, if ít applies)


DenverD (Linux Counter 282315)
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
posted via NNTP w/TBird 2.0.0.23 | KDE 3.5.7 | openSUSE 10.3
2.6.22.19-0.4-default SMP i686
AMD Athlon 1 GB RAM | GeForce FX 5500 | ASRock K8Upgrade-760GX |
CMedia 9761 AC’97 Audio

In addition to DenverD’s suggestions, have you tried seeing if another distro also has problems? Try ubuntu live say, or just download and gparted and it’s tools and run from usb.

Yeah, I use the official copies only, and try to use good media and do all preparations. The installation media is likely not damaged, because both the 11.2 DVD and 11.3 KDE live CD I burned yesterday do the same thing, and the other HDD is always detected properly. Will check the install disk later when I look into this again.

Haven’t tried another distro yet, perhaps I will at some point. Configuring the rest of my system now.

And as far as I know I’m not using RAID. All my HDD ports are set to AHCI mode from BIOS.

I shall probably test more, but imho I think one of the devs should look at this, if they have a similar HDD to test with. When it comes to Linux I’m still a newb, but this strongly feels to me like openSuse does not understand the new HDD properly, from everything I tried and seen.

MirceaKitsune wrote:
> I shall probably test more, but imho I think one of the devs should
> look at this, if they have a similar HDD to test with. When it comes to
> Linux I’m still a newb, but this strongly feels to me like openSuse does
> not understand the new HDD properly, from everything I tried and seen.

that is possible, there are LOTS of new stuff on the shelves…tell
me, does your new drive use “4K phyisical sectors” i do not know if
11.2 does that out of the box…

but i note the latest release of openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 5: The
Community Strikes Back uses “parted 2.2; M5 has a complete toolkit for
supporting 4K phyisical sector disks”

<http://news.opensuse.org/2010/04/14/opensuse-11-3-milestone-5-the-community-strikes-back/>

that MAY solve that problem…but BE ADVISED! M5 is NOT ready for
unexperienced uses…it is released for TESTING…

it may work for you but it may not…i would NOT suggest you install
it to any system holding important, do not loose, data, photos, music,
papers, letters, emails etc etc etc…

what you MIGHT consider doing is (if that new drive is completely
empty) is remove the other drive and see if M5 will ‘see’ the new
drive properly…if so, return here and hope someone will walk you
through using the new ‘parted’ (a Linux program to partition hard
drives) to build your disk structure that you can then install 11.2 on

or do a small 11.3 install and immediately down grade it to a
patched 11.2

or, maybe the next guy here tells you i don’t know what i’m talking
about, which might be true…so, before you start changing stuff read
my sig’s caveat!


DenverD (Linux Counter 282315)
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
posted via NNTP w/TBird 2.0.0.23 | KDE 3.5.7 | openSUSE 10.3
2.6.22.19-0.4-default SMP i686
AMD Athlon 1 GB RAM | GeForce FX 5500 | ASRock K8Upgrade-760GX |
CMedia 9761 AC’97 Audio

Thanks a lot for the info. I’m not sure if my drive is a ‘4K physical sector’, is there any way to check for that and see?

And now it appears that whether I plug in my sata2 or not, the same issues happen with the new HDD. So from what I’m seeing having the other one doesn’t affect the new one not working.

I finished reinstalling my Windows system and copying my data, so I can’t do anything risky any more. I’d be glad to do more safe tests and help with fixing this though.

I hope this revive is ok. I’m seeing 11.3 is coming out in 20 days, and since the latest development version I tried still didn’t work, I’m very concerned I may not be able to install OpenSuse again :frowning: I’d really appreciate any further help or information, especially since I seem to be the only one having this issue.

I’ve been using the hard drive since I made this topic about it (I have my Windows install on it so I use it daily). There’s not a single problem, and the drive works perfectly with Windows even after these months. So I’m certain that my hardware is good in all ways.

As I mentioned last time, I tried it both on sata2 and sata3 ports, in ahci and ide mode, tried erasing everything and formatting the HDD to nothing, but it still didn’t work. OpenSuse does not see the hard disk and / or sees partitions on it as corrupted.

Are there any news about this? Has anyone else experienced a similar issue so far? I read about a 2TB limit on google… perhaps it could be related to this (though it only addresses +2TB partitions from what I heard, which isn’t my case).

My hard disk again is a Seagate 2TB Baracuda XT, SATA3, 7200rpm, 64MB. If anyone else has this model I would be happy to know their experience with it and OpenSuse. Did OpenSuse detect it? Could they partition and see it from the installer and from OpenSuse without a problem? Is any bios setting known to cause such an issue?

I miss OpenSuse and would love to install it again, so I really hope there are news about this. Would be happy if the issue was at least acknowledged and identified by the developers by now. I’ll try 11.3 once it’s out, though I have low hopes it will work.

On 06/24/2010 06:46 PM, MirceaKitsune wrote:
>
> I hope this revive is ok. I’m seeing 11.3 is coming out in 20 days, and
> since the latest development version I tried still didn’t work, I’m very
> concerned I may not be able to install OpenSuse again :frowning: I’d really
> appreciate any further help or information, especially since I seem to
> be the only one having this issue.
>
> I’ve been using the hard drive since I made this topic about it (I have
> my Windows install on it so I use it daily). There’s not a single
> problem, and the drive works perfectly with Windows even after these
> months. So I’m certain that my hardware is good in all ways.
>
> As I mentioned last time, I tried it both on sata2 and sata3 ports, in
> ahci and ide mode, tried erasing everything and formatting the HDD to
> nothing, but it still didn’t work. OpenSuse does not see the hard disk
> and / or sees partitions on it as corrupted.
>
> Are there any news about this? Has anyone else experienced a similar
> issue so far? I read about a 2TB limit on google… perhaps it could be
> related to this (though it only addresses +2TB partitions from what I
> heard, which isn’t my case).
>
> My hard disk again is a ‘Seagate 2TB Baracuda XT, SATA3, 7200rpm, 64MB’
> (http://tinyurl.com/2vn7kst). If anyone else has this model I would be
> happy to know their experience with it and OpenSuse. Did OpenSuse detect
> it? Could they partition and see it from the installer and from OpenSuse
> without a problem? Is any bios setting known to cause such an issue?
>
> I miss OpenSuse and would love to install it again, so I really hope
> there are news about this. Would be happy if the issue was at least
> acknowledged and identified by the developers by now. I’ll try 11.3 once
> it’s out, though I have low hopes it will work.

Have you filed a bug report? The developers do not read this forum. Their
only source of information is your well written, well documented report.
If you know what driver is needed for your device, then that is useful
information.

Yeah, I should have done this long ago. I posted a ticket there just now: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=617288

Just tried the latest 11.3 release candidate (RC 1) 64bit. Unfortunately the issue is still there, so I won’t be able to install 11.3 either :frowning:

The same problem occurs, and the installer does not detect my hard disk at all. In order to be sure it’s not something on my end again, I also tried all possible jumper settings on the problematic HDD (it came without a jumper so i used one from a different SATA HDD), but that didn’t change anything. I tried the BIOS FailSafe and Default configurations again, and also tried switching between IDE and AHCI mode again from bios. It still makes no difference whether I plug in the other HDD either (that one is always seen properly and this one is never seen by the installer).

I hope 11.4 will work, or maybe through some miracle this can be fixed in 11.3 before it’s released, if there’s still time in 20 days.

On 06/25/2010 01:06 PM, MirceaKitsune wrote:
>
> Just tried the latest 11.3 release candidate (RC 1) 64bit. Unfortunately
> the issue is still there, so I won’t be able to install 11.3 either :frowning:

Does this disk have sectors larger than 512 bytes?

> The same problem occurs, and the installer does not detect my hard disk
> at all. In order to be sure it’s not something on my end again, I also
> tried all possible jumper settings on the problematic HDD (it came
> without a jumper so i used one from a different SATA HDD), but that
> didn’t change anything. I tried the BIOS FailSafe and Default
> configurations again, and also tried switching between IDE and AHCI mode
> again from bios. It still makes no difference whether I plug in the
> other HDD either (that one is always seen properly and this one is never
> seen by the installer).
>
> I hope 11.4 will work, or maybe through some miracle this can be fixed
> in 11.3 before it’s released, if there’s still time in 20 days.

Please boot the Live CD and post any information relating to the problem
that occur in dmesg. In addition, please post the model number of the drive.

How do I know this? I’m not seeing it in the specs on the website I got it from. Any way to see it from Windows or bios (in case anyone here also knows about Win)?

I will try this tomorrow or soon, and post the info here when I have it.

Just tried 11.3 64bit which is now out, and the issue is still there. I hope 11.3 can be updated when this problem is solved, so users with my hardware won’t have to wait for 11.4 to install.

Also, I realized I haven’t mentioned an important detail. My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7, with an X58 Express Intel ICH10R chipset. Placa de baza Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 I heard this might be an important part, so just in case it makes any difference.

On 07/15/2010 10:46 AM, MirceaKitsune wrote:
>
> Just tried 11.3 64bit which is now out, and the issue is still there. I
> hope 11.3 can be updated when this problem is solved, so users with my
> hardware won’t have to wait for 11.4 to install.
>
> Also, I realized I haven’t mentioned an important detail. My
> motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7, with an X58 Express Intel ICH10R
> chipset. ‘Placa de baza Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7’
> (http://tinyurl.com/29cj7f2) I heard this might be an important part, so
> just in case it makes any difference.

DO NOT DOUBLE POST!!!

See my reply with the other post.

I started asking about this issue again, now that many months have passed and 11.4 might be getting close. Was wondering if there are any news about this issue, and if its cause was at least discovered and confirmed.

I don’t have any new info, except something another user told me today on IRC. He said it could be a problem with the JMB363 controller on Linux, which is a known issue. However, I tried this HDD on both sata2 and sata3 ports (one of them on a jmicron controller and the other on something else) and it didn’t work on either of them. And again, my other drive (400GB sata2) works well on any of the ports / controllers. But in case this could be a pointer and help in resolving the issue, I thought to mention it too.

What people have not learned yet is that SATA 1 controllers will not read SATA 2 or SATA 3 drives in all cases. I had a similar problem with my computer which had on SATA drive. I used a PCI SATA drive controller with a 350 GB SATA 1 and a 500 GB SATA 1 drive. When I tried to use a SATA 2 750 GB drive with the same control card, the computer could not find the drive either. I had to upgrade to a newer controller card in order to read the 750 GB drive. And for what it’s worth, my recommendation is to NOT Mix SATA 1 and SATA 2 drives on the same controller card - it seems to be leading to lockups on a regular basis.