[CLOSED] Installer does not see the HDD

Hi there,

On the Zorin OS Dutch community forum do i have a question from a member with a very strange problem that i can't give a solution for it.
Maybe you guys know the answer.

The member has a laptop and install Windows 8.1 on it (not UEFI but in MBR bios modus).
Now he want's to install Zorin OS 9 Core besides of it but the option simply don't show up and instead he got the "Installationtype" window.
In that window the only disk that shows up is the Intel Rapid Storage SSD chip as sda
But the real HDD doesn't show up where he is suposed to install zorin at it.

We try in AHCI modus and Raid modus but the problem remains, the HDD does not show up.
On the other hand... when we start GParted the HDD is shown as sdb
So what could be the problem?

Hi Hensyr, I think it will be down to the number of partitions labeled as Primary as I had similar incident with my HP 110 netbook - viz System partition 100 Mb (350 Mb on Windows 8 and 10), C:/ drive, Recovery partition, Recovery media creator just check again in gparted how many primary partitions are present.

Hi dear Swarfendor437,

In this example there are only three primary partitions see photo "knipsel"

one system reserved
two C partition
three Extended partition
four D logical partition
five E logical partition



see also photo from gparted "knipsel1"



So with your answer in my mind we desided to schrink the C partion in Windows see photo "knipsel2"



And try to resize the the Extended partition but that won't worked (we can not resize the exended partition)
Instead we make the partition Ext4 and try that one to install on it but again the installer didn't see the Ext4 partition too.



So we have the same problem with four primary partitons

one is by the system preserved primary
two is the C partion primary
three is Ext4 partition primary
four is Extended partition primary
five is D partition logical
six is E partition locical

Then i realized that we try to resize the extended partition the wrong way so we retried to resize the Extended partition with succes.

The HDD is now:

sda is the Intel Rapid Storage SSD chip

sdb1 is the system reserved NTFS partition = primary
sdb2 is the NTFS system (C) partition = primary
sdb3 is the Extended partition = primary
sdb5 is the NTFS (D) partition = logical
sdb6 is the NTFS (E) partiition = logical
sdb7 is the Swap partition = logical
sdb8 is the Ext4 partition = logical

see photo "knipsel4"



So with these partitions on the HDD we tried again to install Zorin OS but we got the same problem, the installer just don't see the HDD

Hi Hensyr, there must be something to do with hard drive settings by machine. Can you make those photos any brighter/clearer?

Hi Swarfendor437,

Yes maybe we see something over the head by the machine drive settings but we tried every possible setup.
Something we missed... but we don't have a clue

For the photo (last one) i made a drawing of the photo in Edraw Max because the member can't make it much better than they already are.
Here is the partition table as they now is in the present time

OK, that partition table looks pretty messy. I would have first shrunk the Windows partition then moved the two data partitions up against the shrunken XP partition - the fact that all NTFS partitions are the same colour still leads me to suspect that they are all Primary in nature. I also would put the swap area After ext4.

Hi dear Swarfendor437,

We have deleted all the partitions.
Install Windows 8.1 again and make a swap and Ext4 partition.

So now there are 3 primary partitions
1 reserved NTFS
2 System (C) OS NTFS
3 Extended partition
An 2 logical partitions
5 Ext4 System Zorin OS
6 Swap partition

I made a drawing again because the photo is realy bad



So now we tried again to install but the installer won't show us the /sdb drive

but we found a breakthrough

Google is our friend and we found something: remove dmraid in synaptic
So we opened synaptic and deleted dmraid

Now we can see the /sdb drive in the installer

Should we proceed and install Zorin in that way with dmraid removed?

Hi, I don't know anything about drain but as you appear to have found the reason for sdb not showing I would give it a shot but do so at own risk. Keep us posted.

Hi Swarfendor437,

We stil not started whith removing dmraid in synaptic.
Instead i found this article: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/SataRaid

We are now sure that the SSD chip is in raid whith te HDD drive.
But because everything is in Englisch i let you reed it first and ask your opinion about this article.

Hi Hensyr, that article is for Debian - Zorin is Ubuntu based - take a look here:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/717465/i ... ision-5510

Hi dear Swarfendor437,

The member has closed the topic and wants to abandon a dual boot installation.
I find it a bit sad that I do not possess the appropriate know-how to guide the member to do this complicated topic.
But so be it, I still have much to learn.

No worries Hensyr - at least you can take a look at that last pointer I gave you.
Will mark this thread as [CLOSED].