hardrive errors before installing?

[raceday]

I am trying yo boot from the Red Hat CD Rom and I get to the part that ask what type of installation - When I choose server...
my hard drive is not recognized? Why? I have a 20 Gig Drive
that is formatted in Dos - Do I have to destroy yhis partition?

[DMR]

If you are doing a normal (non-expert/custom mode) installation, Redhat will attempt to autopartition the drive, which is something you don't want it to do if you have any existing Windows partitions (trust me). You will need to defragment and then shrink the FAT/FAT32 partition to free up space for Linux. A free DOS resizing utility called fips should be included with you distro, be sure to read the documentation carefully. I also believe that in the latest versions of Redhat, the installation's partitioning tool (Disk Druid) can be used to non-destructively resize Win paritions if you choose to manually partition or choose an expert/custom mode install, although I haven't done it myself. Either way, if you don't wan't to lose the data on the drive, back it up before attempting to alter the partition!

[raceday]

Thanks for your help but I can't get Linux to recognize the drive at all? I want to get rid of Windows completly! During the Linux
boot up the comment says "Did not recognize HDA - resetting Drive?" then it never finds it? What do I use (Fips) to set the
partition to only Linux format? so I can install any kind of linux?

[DMR]

<rant>
The first thing you do is DELETE YOUR DUPLICATE POST ON THIS VERY SAME SUBJECT (http://linuxnewbie.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58635)! Crossposting/duplicate posting wastes our time.
</rant>

As for fips- it is used to split/shrink Windows partitions to give you free space in which to create Linux-formatted (ext2, ext3, reiserfs) partitions. It does not itself format partitions with a Linux filesystem; that would be done during installation. Read the fips documentation thoroughly before using it.

If you don't want to save the DOS/Windows partition, you can boot with a DOS emeergancy boot disk containing fdisk and delete the partition using that program. This will leave the entire drive as unformatted free space, which the Linux installer should recognize as usable.

Just to be sure- you have tried the custom/expert install mode, yes?

Out of curiosity, does the drive have any sort of "overlay" program on it such as EZ-BIOS or Disk Manager?

[mdwatts]

And some members (namely me) do not respond to crossposts.