Not all IDE hard disks are detected by my BIOS

[Paul Smith]

On 8/18/06, Mikkel L. Ellertson <mikkel at infinity-ltd.com> wrote:
> >>>> At boot time, my new BIOS is unable to detect 2 of my 3 IDE hard
> >>>> disks. However, I can access to all of them from FC5. Is there
> >>>> something that I can do to have the BIOS detecting all my IDE hard
> >>>> disks?
> >>>>
> >>> I would check that you have the jumpers set correctly on the hard
> >>> drives. I had an issue with a Western Digital drive that I had set to
> >>> slave when it was actually the master and the BIOS would not pick it up.
> >>> I am assuming these are PATA not SATA drives.
> >> Thanks, Ryan and Tony. If the hard drives were not correctly connected
> >> I would not be able to boot in them, is not it?
> >
> > Right.  But that doesn't say that that the drives are on the connections
> > where the kernel says there are no drives.  The drives are connected
> > elsewhere, where the kernel reports them to be.  Other connections may be
> > unused.
> >
> One point to keep in mind - it is the BIOS, and not the kernel that
> is generating the messages. It sounds like the BIOS is set to check
> for drives on all the IDE interfaces every time it boots, and not
> all interfaces have drives on them. There is nothing wrong with
> this. I normally turn this off, and set the drive types in the BIOS,
> but I also know to go into the BIOS and change things if I change
> drives.
>
> One other thing to keep in mind is that we do not know if there are
> really 3 IDE drives. From what the OP has said, I am not sure how
> much he really knows about his hardware. It would be interesting to
> see the output of "fdisk -l" when run as root. This would tell us
> both how many driver there are, and what interfaces they are on.

OK, the result of 'fdisk -l' is:

# /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1        3187    25599546    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2            3188        3200      104422+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3            3201       14593    91514272+  8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/hdb: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1   *           1         764     6136798+  83  Linux
/dev/hdb2             765        9964    73899000    5  Extended
/dev/hdb5             765         904     1124518+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdb6             905        9964    72774418+  83  Linux

Disk /dev/hde: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hde1   *           1       10000    80324968+  83  Linux
/dev/hde2           10001       19457    75963352+  8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/dm-0: 92.5 GB, 92576677888 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 11255 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 1073 MB, 1073741824 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 130 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Paul