# trouble mounting tools cd



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

im typing the right command mount /dev/hdX /cdrom
how can i found out what letter my cdrom is, ive tried EVERY letter in the alphabet, each time it says "special device does not exist". except when i tried I and J, it said "you must specify the filesystem type"
how can i find out if all my files are on the tools cd, just to be sure. please help.
also, im using a new, freshly formatted drive (if that matters).


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

note all of these are lower case
hda=primary master
hdb=primary slave
hdc=secondary master
hdd=secondary slave.


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

ive tried a,b,c and d and it says special device does not exist


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

the tivo drive is set as primary slave and the cdrom is secondary master (i think!)


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

do you have a serial ATA interface in your PC?
that can muck things up.


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

i dont know what that is, exactly

this is what i have in my pc
pc hard drive prim master
tivo hard drive prim slave
lite on cd/dvd burner sec master
lite on cd-rom sec slave
i also have a digital media manager that reads compact flash cards, smart media, ect.


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

ah ha
I bet the card reader is interfering 
can it be disabled in the bios?


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

i dont think its in there, but not 100%
can i just open the case back up and unplug it?


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

don't see why not
when booting pay close attention to the messages on screen
they should tell you what's where


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

i will give it a try

thanks!


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

unplugging the card reader, didnt work
also, before i get to the commant prompt
it gives me these messages
hda: no response (status =0xfe) resetting drive
hdc: no response " " " " " resetting drive
hde: no response " " " " " resetting drive
hdg: no response " " " " " resetting drive
it keeps going and it then shows my hard drive and cdroms, but it goes by to fast for me to read what it says

so lost


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

so it's not seeing ANY of your drives.
Are you SURE you are dealing with plain ole IDE and not SERIAL ATA?


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

well see, im not really sure
how can i find out
i have an emachines T6524, if you want to look up the specs.


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

it says on the front my pc hard drive is an ATA  
so i guess your right 
what do i have to do to get IDE?


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

I bet your cdrom drives are ide
use that channel instead
and you will have to make sure your tivo HD is IDE also since tivo doesn't do SATA


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

ok so have the cdrom and the tivo hd on the same cable (that the 2 cdroms where on)?


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

yes


----------



## ttodd1 (Nov 6, 2003)

Have you checked the jumpers on the drives? If they are all set to master that could cause some of your greif.


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

ttodd1 said:


> Have you checked the jumpers on the drives? If they are all set to master that could cause some of your greif.


i had the tivo hard drive set as slave

ive been wasting my time, the hd i wanted to use is an ATA, so i guess its useless?
im gonna use the original tivo hd, does it matter if my cdroms are ATA (i dont know if they are, or not.)
also, where my cables plug into the motherboard it says ide1 and ide2 (if that matters).


----------



## ttodd1 (Nov 6, 2003)

ATA and serial ATA are NOT the samething


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

the hard drive i was going to use just says ATA
but during boot it wont find it or my pc hd either
so it must not be the right kind


----------



## ttodd1 (Nov 6, 2003)

From what I can find on your pc there is no mention that it has SATA drives. So that leads to something is not setup/plugged in right, or I guess there have been cases where a newer pc would not work with the boot cd.


----------



## WillowTheDog (Oct 14, 2003)

One more thing that might help you in determining your problem. After linux has finished booting, you can scroll back up through all of the info it spat out by holding down SHIFT and pressing the PAGE UP key. At some point, the output should have told you where it thinks your drives are.


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

WillowTheDog said:


> One more thing that might help you in determining your problem. After linux has finished booting, you can scroll back up through all of the info it spat out by holding down SHIFT and pressing the PAGE UP key. At some point, the output should have told you where it thinks your drives are.


ill give that a try, like i said before it says something about the hard drives and cdroms it just goes by to fast for me to read it.

thaks everyone for helping


----------



## tortio (Jan 31, 2002)

I think at the prompt you can type the following:

dmesg 

and you can look for something that will tell you your disk identifier. You can also see what the cdrom is assigned.

Also, make sure you have your IDE ribbon cable in the right way. The purple/red line on the ribbon should be plugged in, in a way that is is going into Pin #1 on the Hard drive. You should be able to find what side is pin 1 by looking on the bottom of the drive. And if you notice, in the ATA/IDE interface on the hd, there are two rows of pins, with one row missing two pins in the center. Most ribbon cables have a matching spot on the female portion of the cable interface to make sure you plug it in correctly. If you ribbon cable does not have this, you can easily plug in the cable upside down.

EDIT: when you type dmesg, I think you can pipe it through "more"

> dmesg | more


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

i did the shift + page up to see what all was done
it found all of my drives
cdrom is k
hdk: lite-on dvdrw, atapi cd/dvd rom
isnt it suppose to be like c or d though? 
also, i know i have my hd plugged it correctly, because it shows under windows and i also formatted it too (before i started this), so i know its working correctly


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

it would be if you didn't have a SATA controller mucking things up. Which I suspect you indeed do.


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

so you think i have a SATA controller, how do i find it and disable it?
could the card reader have something to do with this also, cause its assighned to drive letters (just like a cdrom or hd)


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

does your WINDOWS HD have two rows of 20 pins on it?
or is it smaller?


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

the 2 row 20 pins im sure
its the same as the tivo hd and both cdroms
there all the same


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

then SATA isn't the issue


----------



## ttodd1 (Nov 6, 2003)

As I said I think that I have read where some people with some fairly new pcs would not work with the boot cd. He may just have to find/borrow an older pc from somewhere and try it.


----------



## snowspeeder (Feb 25, 2006)

Look at This...










Now you should be able to use this command in linux to mount the CD-ROM

first
mkdir /cdrom

then...
mount -t iso9660 /dev/hda /cdrom

you should be good to go...
anyhow heres what the drives should be.

Tivo Drive = /dev/hdd
Backup Drive = /dev/hdc
CD-ROM = /dev/hda


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

snowspeeder said:


> Look at This...
> 
> 
> 
> ...


when you say backup drive, are you talking about my pc hd, or my stock tivo drive?


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

snowspeeder
this guys obviously has a non standard setup if his cdrom shows up as /dev/hdk
lets not confuse things further.


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

Gunnyman said:


> snowspeeder
> this guys obviously has a non standard setup if his cdrom shows up as /dev/hdk
> lets not confuse things further.


so what snowspeeder said wont work?


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

did it before?
this is what I said in post 2


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

Gunnyman said:


> did it before?
> this is what I said in post 2


i guess not, i havent tried it with everything plug in, in that order.
trying it with another cdrom wouldnt work? i have a couple lying around.
i guess the only way this is going to work is if i get my hands on another computer


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

dont know if this makes a difference but i noticed this is my bios

IDE channel 1 master none
IDE channel 2 master none
IDE channel 3 master none
IDE channel 4 master none
IDE channel 5 master ST3200826A
IDE channel 5 slave Maxtor
IDE channel 6 master Lite-on DVDRW
IDE channel 6 slave TSST corp cd-rom

just wondering why channels 1-4 are not being used


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

bet I know why....
look at your motherboard.
I BET you have 3 IDE controllers and/or built in RAID.
look on your MOBO for an unused ide controller


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

yes i do have 3 ide controllers
but the 1 unused one is a little different
seems to be around the same size but missing a couple of pins on 1 end
i also have to jumpers on my motherboard thati dont know what are for, i looked in the manual and it doesnt say anything about them

would the channels i listed in the previous post have something to do with my problem?


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

yes
your IDE setup is non standard.
I think you are going to have to locate another PC.


----------



## danny7481 (Dec 6, 2005)

yea, im gonna find another computer
soon i hope

thanks for all the help though!!


----------



## samwise801 (Jun 7, 2008)

...seems I'm having the same problem as was addressed in this thread.

My MOBO does indeed have a SATA controller _and_ built-in RAID, so when I boot from the SApper disk my CD Drive is hdi and my HDD is hdj.

When I issue the command mount /dev/hdi /cdrom it says "special device /dev/hdi does not exist."

So, to be clear, there is no way around this; I've got to find another MOBO with fewer IDE channels, basically, so that the cd drive will mount as hda/hdb/hdc/hdd? Is that correct?

Thanks!


----------



## AlleyAndy (Feb 2, 2009)

I think the original poster had two issues: 1) More than 3 IDE or RAID or non-standard IDE and 2) a memory card reader.

The process I'd use is to change only one variable at a time. So, I'd remove the Tivo drive, and try things with the computer's original configuration. Once that's figured out, then I'd try the Tivo drive.

I believe that built-in RAID controllers could be a problem, so I'd go into the BIOS setup and see if they can be disabled. Then reboot the system and see if the drive layout changes.

I'd expect that, in some situations, the drive layout would change when an IDE controller is disabled, and the device names would just shify down. So, if there were a /dev/hda through /dev/hdf, then I'd hope that disabling one IDE would then result in /dev/hda through /dev/hdd and not just /dev/hda and /dev/hdb being disabled.

I've seen memory card readers that appear as multiple drives, which messes up the "Standard" drive layout, and makes it appear that each memory slot is a different drive. I'd just unplug the memory card reader, in that case.

Again, the trick is to experiment with things enough to figure out what the pattern is, and only then bring the Tivo drive into the mix.


----------

