Gparted does not detect my hard disk

[valemon]

I decided to install gentoo in my laptop. I have already installed openSuSE 10.2 and Windows Vista was pre-installed
I inserted gparted live-cd in order to shrink the Windows partition, it booted normally but it couldn't detect the hard disc (no disks detected). Unfortunately I don't remember how I partitioned the hard disk for the openSuSE installation. Any help is appreciated.

[MikeTbob]

You can install gparted into Suse from the repos and use it from there, that's what I have done in the past with Fedora. Is this a SATA HD??

[valemon]

It is SATA indeed. It sounds really useful installing gparted in openSuSE. I will give it a try. Thanks for your help.

[budman7]

Vista has its own partitioning tool which will allow you to resize it.
Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>>Disk management>
Right-click on the Vista partition and select "Shrink volume"
the added benefit to using Vistas partitioning tool is Vista won't complain at next bootup due to the fact that its size was changed.

[MikeTbob]

Vista has its own partitioning tool which will allow you to resize it.
Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>>Disk management>
Right-click on the Vista partition and select "Shrink volume"
the added benefit to using Vistas partitioning tool is Vista won't complain at next bootup due to the fact that its size was changed.

Very Interesting!
I didn't know about this, thanks for the heads up. It makes me wonder why MS included such a nifty little program that benefits Linux users!

[devils casper]

Miscrosoft has changed a lot of things in Vista. Vista has modified Boot Loader and it keeps two copies of Partition Table. One in MBR and other, I couldn't find yet.
Whenever one changes partition structure using any third party Partitioning Tool, Vista starts complaining and in most cases, doesn't boot up.

[Gtrax]

I know this is not much use to you if Vista got there first, but if you did your partitioning first, making a primary NTFS partition intended for Vista, and then claim the entire remainder of the disk capacity into a single extended partition. You can then create your logical partitions for Linux distros in there.
At that point, you install vista into the NTFS partition, not allowing it to format the rest of the drivespace. Vista's boot-up code in the MBR eventually gets replaced by your dual-boot GRUB setup, which will point at both and let you choose. I do hope I got that right. Vista does use a NTFS partition .. I think. With such a scheme, its hard to see what Vista could complain about, since it only ever got to live in that fixed space.

For me - I have the unopened Vista pack, being returned for refund, like it says on the agreement we can do if we find the license terms unacceptable - which I do.
G

[valemon]

Finally I managed to use the gparted live-cd. All I had to do was to disable sata native support from BIOS. Then everything worked ok.
Thanks everyone for your suggestions.