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I cannot install Ubuntu because it makes the claim that no drive space is available. In reality it is simply not detecting my hard drive, although it is physically hooked up.

Update: I am pretty sure it has nothing to do with jumpers, the hard drive has none so it is probably default/master, the dvd drive is slave.

In any case, I arrived here because upon attempting to install Ubuntu it sends me to that page with the check list after I choose the language, there is no window that appears between choosing the language and making sure I have drive space and internet connection.

I have a western digital SATA hdd ~500 GB and the BIOS is AMIBIOS 08.00.15.

How should I proceed with installing Ubuntu 12.10 in this case?

BIOS Drive Information:

Vendor      :WDC WD5000AACS-00G8B1
Size        :500.1GB
LBA Mode    :Supported
Block Mode  :16Sectors
PIO Mode    :4
Async DMA   :MutiWord DMA-2
Ultra DMA   :Ultra DMA-6
S.M.A.R.T.  :Supported

S.M.A.R.T. is disabled

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How should I proceed with installing Ubuntu 12.10 in this case?

You are using a SATA disc with a controller that Gparted does not seem to recognize. For such cases you need to use the alternate installer.

The alternate installer has some extra checks and will show you a list of drivers to select for your controller. So (obviously) to get the correct one you need to find out what type of controller you have. You might be able to find this information in your manuals, maybe in your BIOS or maybe from the live CD (lspci and/or dmesg | grep SATA). It might be useful to include hardware specs in your question (and someone might be able to tell from that what the controller might be).

The iSCSI part is probably shown due to selecting the wrong controller. It is a setup where you provide IP and port to get to the controller. The IP I am unsure of but al lot of examples I see state 192.168.1.10 with port 3260 (is the default).


I found the following, that looks like your issue, on launchpad: https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+question/122781

There is a command there

dmesg > ~/out123.txt; gedit ~/out123.txt; rm ~/out123.txt

Search for lines that state ata and look like errors. From the topic it shows [ 8.188025] ata3.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4) where the last reply is not very reassuring.


Also found a note about checking BIOS and set data mode not to RAID.

I shall try to expand this answer; comments are getting out of hand

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  • Yes, this problem is definitely a result of mixing Ubuntu with this western digital hard disk drive. There is nothing wrong with either that other person's drive or my own. Here is some back story, I first tried getting into linux with 11.10 on this same machine. The reason I never got anywhere was due to this same problem I am having today, but this time I am spreading the news about the issue at least. I get the same errors as the other person, but the drive is not corrupt or damaged.
    – Leonardo
    Jan 6, 2013 at 0:38

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