Fresh install won't recognize hard drive

[barepaw]

I recently was given a Compaq desktop minus the hard drive. I have a Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB hard drive that I put into it. When I tried to install Ubuntu 9.04, it gets to the part where I'm supposed to partition the drive, but the drive doesn't show up. There is no drive or partition option listed and all the buttons are greyed out. All it will let me do is click "Forward". When I do, it says "Root File System Not Found". When I reboot and go into the bios, it shows up there and I can put it into the boot order. This hard drive currently has Ubuntu installed on it (I was going to reformat during the install) but it won't boot and run the old install either. Any ideas?

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Boot up from Ubuntu LiveCD, open Terminal and execute this

sudo fdisk -l

Does it display Partition Structure of Hard disk? Post output here.

* Its small L in fdisk -l.

[barepaw]

sudo fdisk -l

nothing

sudo fdisk -u /dev/hda

"unable to open /dev/hda"

sudo fdisk -u hda

"unable to open hda"

sudo fdisk /dev/hda

"unable to open /dev/hda"

[devils casper]

Its not detecting Harddisk at all. Have you tried same Hard Disk in another machine?

[barepaw]

Yeah, After the new install failed, I put the hard drive in another machine to test it and the old install booted right up. I think the Compaq had IDE drives in it before. I got an old IDE drive to work in it, but the drive I want to use is SATA. The mother board has ports for both, and both are recognized in the bios, so I thought it would be ok. Is there something else I need to do to make that switch?

[Bemk]

Yeah, After the new install failed, I put the hard drive in another machine to test it and the old install booted right up. I think the Compaq had IDE drives in it before. I got an old IDE drive to work in it, but the drive I want to use is SATA. The mother board has ports for both, and both are recognized in the bios, so I thought it would be ok. Is there something else I need to do to make that switch?

I don't know but shouldn't there be an option to enable SATA in the BIOS and is it enabled?

[barepaw]

There is and SATA is enabled. The hard drive is recognized in the BIOS (It actually comes up in the boot order as "WDC", Which I assume means it recognizes it as a Western Digital Caviar drive. As far as things are concerned in the BIOS, the hard drive works with the motherboard just fine. Ubuntu just refuses to recognize it.