Preparing Hard Drive

[Owen]

I have been stuck for more than two weeks now trying to install various Linux packages without success.
Therefor I will start over by aksing a few very basic and probably stupid questions concerning my hard drive (Maxtor 100 Gb). There isn't any software installed on this computer. The Maxtor is the second hard drive that I have installed the previous one was a Western Digital (80Gb) which didn't work either.
Does the hard drive have to be partitioned with Fdisk prior to inserting a Linux installation disk?
If so, would that be a 16 or 32 bit format?
Is there a problem with hard drives being recognized by Linux software?

I have also changed out the cables and the CD/DVD hardware.

If it isn't preparing the hard drive could the problem lie with something in the way the CMOS is set Up?

Thanks for any help or suggestions.
Owen

[rcgreen]

It is not necessary for the drive to be partitioned or
formatted. The Linux installation will do all that. Most
computers will automatically detect the drive and set the
BIOS parameters correctly, but some do not. In that case
you must enter setup and select "detect hard drives" or
something of that nature. It must also be set to boot from
the cdrom. When the cd boots, it should detect the drive.
If it does not, make sure the cables, drive jumpers and
so forth are set properly.

[rinjo]

Hi,
what were the problems that you encountered during your installation?
Check what rcgreen has mentioned and try installing again.
If you face problems, post the error messages here.

Good luck...

[Owen]

[QUOTE=rinjo;497614]Hi,
what were the problems that you encountered during your installation?
Check what rcgreen has mentioned and try installing again.
If you face problems, post the error messages here.

Good luck... [

At this point I'm not sure where the problem lies. I have without success tried to install two versions of Kubuntu, one version of Ubuntu and both the 32 and 64 bit versions of Mandriva 2007.
BUT !!!
Mandriva One installed real slick, no problem!
Right now I'm wondering why the other editions did not install. The Ubuntu and Kubuntu did not give any indications, just started with the splash screen and went slower than slow and soon stalled. The Mandriva 2007 was more helpful with access to the failure logs within a minute or so from attempting to install.
The hint was numerous lines with
<6> attempt to access beyond end of device
<6> hdc; rw=0 want 8832932, limit 533144
<buffer I/O erron device hdc, logical block 22082xx
Searching the web I found that these errors were quite common and no one seems to have a definate solution. Most concur that the hdc refers to the CD drive . I've switched cables and now awaiting another CD and DVD drives.
The I/O error suggests that it may have to do with the hard drive which according to Maxtor should be recognized as LBA of
CYL= 194259
Heads= 16
Sectors=63
No matter how the CMOS choses, LBA, LARGE, CHS , AUTO defines the hard drive the correct values are not arrived at. I had the same problem with a Wester Digital 80 Gig HD.

As Mandriva One is working o.k. I probably won't mess the set up but I can't keep from wondering what the difference is in the newer software so that it won't install when the older stuff will?