On Fri, Feb 25, 2000 at 12:06:54AM -0600, ktb wrote > > ktb wrote: > > > > > > > I had stuff on the disk but I meant to wipe it clean. What my problem > > > seems to be coming down to is my computer will no longer auto detect my > > > HD's. I had one HD (primary) with Windows 98 and (secondary) with > > > Slink. Now neither of my HD's are detected. I went into the bios > > > settings and selected "drive auto detect" and it shows nothing is > > > there. I manually set them to "auto" and still nothing is seen. I just > > > don't understand how creating a new partition valid in the eyes of > > > windows or not prevents my bios from detecting that there are HD's > > > there? > > > > John Pearson wrote: > > > > > It won't. If the BIOS doesn't see your drive then you need to fix > > that before any fdisk or partition-recovery software can work on it. > > > > Likely culprits are incorrect jumpers, missing power cables, and > > bad or misfitted ribbon cables. > > > > If you've had your case open, re-check that all your cables are > > seated correctly and verify that you don't have any that are > > "off-by-one-row-of-pins". Verify that the problem drive and any > > others on the same cable have power cables connected, and all > > pins are correctly seated (some drives will operate after a > > fashion with no power cable, presumably running off power sucked > > through the ribbon cable; sometimes when you insert a power > > cable the pin on the drive pushes its mate out of the power > > connector shell, rather than seating itself comfortably in the > > socket). If you have a spare ribbon cable, try replacing the one > > you're using now (if all else fails, get a known good one and do > > that anyway). > > > > If you've re-cabled or re-installed your drives, verify the > > jumper settings and try using the problem drive as a single > > master: some drives have problems acting as the master for some > > slaves, and vice versa. > > > > > This is a brand new computer. Everything was working fine until I > cfdisked the primary drive. Then the bios can't detect either of my > drives. The only one detected is my cdrom drive. I've swapped the > disks around, took the battery out and put it back in and fiddled with > the cables and such all to no avail. I just don't get this at all. One > person told me that cfdisk could corrupt the bios. I don't understand > how but maybe that is what has happened?
I don't think so. The bios information is stored in battery-backed RAM that is examined by the kernel at boot time but is not otherwise used or directly accessible on Linux systems (unless you include support for /dev/nvram when you build your kernel, and even then you have to actually access it through the appropriate device); cfdisk gets the geometry from the kernel, but it doesn't change anything on your disk other than what's recorded on the media. The BIOS auto-detection interrogates the firmware on your drive to determine disk geometry, and a failure to detect the disk suggests missing or broken firmware (e.g. a dead or disconnected drive), a problem with your IDE interface (e.g. a broken motherboard or plug-in adapter) or some kind of problem with your IDE chain (e.g. a dud or incorrectly fitted cable). It may be that you could misconfigure a drive using hdparm to the extent that it wouldn't work, but I can't see how. Does the drive have any fancy tricks, like UDMA? If so that may require a compatible interface, BIOS settings or jumpering on the drive to make it work with your interface. If you know the model of your drive, that might be useful information to post. One other possibility is a resource conflict (e.g., IRQ 15 or IO 0x1f0-f used both by your IDE controller and some other device); can your BIOS see other IDE devices on that cable? If not and you've changed BIOS resource settings or inserted any adapters, check that out (pulling the battery off the motherboard counts as "changing BIOS settings" in a big way :). Finally, just to confirm: are we talking about a fairly plain PCI/ISA IBM-compatible desktop system? All bets are off if it's a laptop... John P. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Oh - I - you know - my job is to fear everything." - Bill Gates in Denmark
