In and attempt to have a dual boot laptop


Ive been trying to get get the slackware install to recognize the D: drive on install.

After trying every scenerio online. I still come up short.

I was thinking of changing the physical location of the drive?

Out of the box (2018) it was setup in RAID config.

The BIOS shows the two drives as
First HDD none
Second HDD none
Third HDD IntelSSDlkji (180.G)
fourth HDD sd2000louol (2000.3G)

Was wondering if I could move the D: drive to the first or seconds spot?

And any other actions I would need to take?
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Bogomips wrote to All <=-

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In and attempt to have a dual boot laptop

Ive been trying to get get the slackware install to recognize the D:
drive on install.

After trying every scenerio online. I still come up short.

I was thinking of changing the physical location of the drive?

Out of the box (2018) it was setup in RAID config.

The BIOS shows the two drives as
First HDD none
Second HDD none
Third HDD IntelSSDlkji (180.G)
fourth HDD sd2000louol (2000.3G)

Was wondering if I could move the D: drive to the first or seconds
spot?

And any other actions I would need to take?

Try using a Linux Live CD like systemrescuecd. Boot it, see if that detects it.
Also look at the output of "dmesg", see if that reports any errors, and the output of the command 'lsblk'.

I'm not too familiar with Slackware installer, but if there is a way to get to a command line interface WITHIN the installer to run commands, you could do this within the Slackware installer. Often with Linux installers you can get access to a shell.

dmesg will show you all the kernel messages. If you look through it, it will mention everything the kernel has detected in terms of hardware. It will indicate if its found the other hard drive or not, and should detect any RAID set up.

lsblk is another command which simply lists block devices.

It is a little unusual for Linux not to see the drive, I've never really come across that before.

It's also important to understand that Linux does NOT do drive letters, it does devices. C: and D: are windows constructs for PARTITIONS. First partition C:, Second D: and so on. D: could actually be on the SAME disk as C:

Also, if you have a second hard-drive, but it is NOT partitioned for Windows, it
won't come up as D: at all.

If you could let us know what 'lsblk' reports, that would help.

A drive will appear to be something like
/dev/sdd
with each partition
/dev/sdd1
/dev/sdd2
etc

The fact that the BIOS is finding it means that Linux SHOULD see it as well. Lets see what Linux actually reports first, and verify this isn't simply a case of it actually seeing it and you not recognising that it found it.

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Bogomips wrote to All <=-

In and attempt to have a dual boot laptop

Ive been trying to get get the slackware install to recognize the D:
drive on install.

This doesn't really make any sense to me. Slackware doesn't know
anything about any "D:". That's a Windows term.

After trying every scenerio online. I still come up short.

I was thinking of changing the physical location of the drive?

Not sure what that means. Attach it to a different port/cable?

Out of the box (2018) it was setup in RAID config.

I would recommend not doing RAID, at least for now. I don't know a
whole lot about RAID, but don't the 2 drives have to be the same size to
use RAID? The data below shows them as different sizes.

The BIOS shows the two drives as
First HDD none
Second HDD none
Third HDD IntelSSDlkji (180.G)
fourth HDD sd2000louol (2000.3G)

Strange, seems they would show up as the First and Second. Are these
SATA? PATA/IDE? M2/NVME? What are they?

Was wondering if I could move the D: drive to the first or seconds
spot?

Not sure what that even means.

And any other actions I would need to take?

Get them connected to (maybe/probably) the SATA0 and SATA1 connectors
(I'm assuming SATA drives here). If you can boot up to the Slackware installation media (USB stick?), then run fdisk/cfdisk/cgdisk to wipe
the partion table out on both drives. Then create new partitions as
desired. Then reboot into the installation media and start the install.

Get the "D:" out of your head when installing Linux/Slackware. Also, in
my dim memory of when I used to dual boot, I believe it's usually
(always?) best to install Windoze before whatever Linux distro you want
to install.

Feel free to ask some more questions with some actual useful info on
your setup/config if you need to. Good luck.



... So easy, a child could do it. Child sold separately.
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Re: Re: Hard Drive configuration
By: Gamgee to Bogomips on Mon May 12 2025 09:33 pm

Ive been trying to get get the slackware install to recognize the D:
drive on install.

This doesn't really make any sense to me. Slackware doesn't know anything about any "D:". That's a Windows term.

I wondered if his "D:" drive is a partition on a secondary hard drive. He may be referring to a specific hard drive he has, wanting to install Linux on it.

Was wondering if I could move the D: drive to the first or seconds spot?

Not sure what that even means.

If he's referring to a specific hard drive he has, I imagined this might mean plugging it into a different SATA port or something.

Nightfox

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Re: Hard Drive configuration
By: Boraxman to Bogomips on Tue May 13 2025 08:04 am

Also look at the output of "dmesg", see if that reports any errors, and the output of the command 'lsblk'.

I ran dmesg yesterday, but have to figure how to pause it. Shift/up arrow doesnt do what it did in previous versions.
Will run lsblk today and see what the output is.

It's also important to understand that Linux does NOT do drive letters, it does devices. C: and D: are windows constructs for PARTITIONS. First partition C:, Second D: and so on. D: could actually be on the SAME disk as C:

Although it seems to have limited CLI i did try and mount /dev/sdb1 it just hung there and gave no error message

It's configured in WIndows as D: and disk1 where C: is disk0 which leads me to believe it's two seperate disks?

If you could let us know what 'lsblk' reports, that would help.

After chores this morning I'll try the 'lsblk' and 'dmesg' after i find the switch to pause it

Thank You for your insight and time to help
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On 12 May 2025, Bogomips said the following...

In and attempt to have a dual boot laptop

Ive been trying to get get the slackware install to recognize the D:
drive on install.

use lsblk...

(sorry for the dump. better to have a huge example)

$ lsblk

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda 8:0 0 3.6T 0 disk
ÀÄsda1 8:1 0 3.6T 0 part /mnt/storage-a
sdb 8:16 0 3.6T 0 disk
ÀÄsdb1 8:17 0 3.6T 0 part /mnt/storage-b
sdc 8:32 0 931.5G 0 disk
ÀÄsdc1 8:33 0 931.5G 0 part /home
sdd 8:48 0 238.5G 0 disk
ÃÄsdd1 8:49 0 650M 0 part /boot/efi
ÃÄsdd2 8:50 0 8G 0 part [SWAP]
ÀÄsdd3 8:51 0 229.8G 0 part /
sde 8:64 0 232.9G 0 disk
ÀÄsde1 8:65 0 232.9G 0 part /mnt/storage-d
sdf 8:80 0 232.9G 0 disk
ÀÄsdf1 8:81 0 232.9G 0 part /mnt/storage-c
nvme0n1 259:0 0 232.9G 0 disk
ÃÄnvme0n1p1 259:1 0 499M 0 part
ÃÄnvme0n1p2 259:2 0 99M 0 part
ÃÄnvme0n1p3 259:3 0 16M 0 part
ÃÄnvme0n1p4 259:4 0 231.6G 0 part /mnt/ntfs-c
ÀÄnvme0n1p5 259:5 0 666M 0 part
nvme1n1 259:6 0 465.8G 0 disk
ÃÄnvme1n1p1 259:7 0 16M 0 part
ÀÄnvme1n1p2 259:8 0 465.7G 0 part /mnt/ntfs-d

you're going to want to be VERY CAREFUL you fully understand which of these drives is which. for example, note that linux can see and i have mounted my two nvme ntfs drives for C: and D: on the windows side. you can see all the "junk" partitions on nvme0n1 that i've just left, as well as the primary partition. you can see sdd has my main linux partitions, including an EFI one for booting, a swap drive and the main linux partition (sdd3) and the separate drive for /home (sdc1)

so now you kind of have an idea what sort of things you're looking for, imagine you have a "storage-d" drive like me that you want to nuke for linux, which is under "sde"

$ cfdisk /dev/sde

i'm kind of suspecting cfdisk is just loading the first drive it sees, and cfdisk is *not* an all-the-drives-at-one-time maintenance tool, so you're thinking it isn't finding your drive. you do your work on one and then
save/close it out and then maybe do the next.

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Nightfox wrote to Gamgee <=-

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Re: Re: Hard Drive configuration
By: Gamgee to Bogomips on
Mon May 12 2025 09:33 pm

Ive been trying to get get the slackware install to recognize the D:
drive on install.

This doesn't really make any sense to me. Slackware doesn't know anything about any "D:". That's a Windows term.

I wondered if his "D:" drive is a partition on a secondary hard drive.
He may be referring to a specific hard drive he has, wanting to install Linux on it.

Was wondering if I could move the D: drive to the first or seconds spot?

Not sure what that even means.

If he's referring to a specific hard drive he has, I imagined this
might mean plugging it into a different SATA port or something.

Hopefully we'll get some information from the system, but I suspect the
issue may simply be that it IS showing the other hard drive, but he's
expecting to see it presented as something different to how it is being presented.

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Re: Re: Hard Drive configuration
By: Gamgee to Bogomips on Mon May 12 2025 09:33 pm

I was thinking of changing the physical location of the drive?

Not sure what that means. Attach it to a different port/cable?

Yes, I was thinking of moving the ribbon, If I could.

I would recommend not doing RAID, at least for now. I don't know a
whole lot about RAID, but don't the 2 drives have to be the same size to
use RAID? The data below shows them as different sizes.

I changed out of RAID, because everywhere I read said to change to ACHI for linux install.

Strange, seems they would show up as the First and Second. Are these
SATA? PATA/IDE? M2/NVME? What are they?

SATA as far as I can tell.

Was wondering if I could move the D: drive to the first or seconds spot?

Not sure what that even means.

Get the "D:" out of your head when installing Linux/Slackware. Also, in
my dim memory of when I used to dual boot, I believe it's usually
(always?) best to install Windoze before whatever Linux distro you want
to install.

I was using the D: as reference to it being visible in windows.

Thank You for your input, i appreciate it

Feel free to ask some more questions with some actual useful info on
your setup/config if you need to. Good luck.

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Re: Re: Hard Drive configuration
By: Gamgee to Bogomips on Mon May 12 2025 09:33 pm

(I'm assuming SATA drives here). If you can boot up to the Slackware installation media (USB stick?), then run fdisk/cfdisk/cgdisk to wipe
the partion table out on both drives. Then create new partitions as desired. Then reboot into the installation media and start the install.

That is my whole dilema. I can't see the second drive during install with cfdisk, in order to partition it. Only sda, no sdb.
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Re: Re: Hard Drive configuration
By: Nightfox to Gamgee on Mon May 12 2025 09:00 pm

Was wondering if I could move the D: drive to the first or seconds spot?

Not sure what that even means.

If he's referring to a specific hard drive he has, I imagined this might mean plugging it into a different SATA port or something.

That's exactly what I was thinking. but would rather not if I don't have to. ---
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Re: Re: Hard Drive configuration
By: fusion to Bogomips on Tue May 13 2025 10:17 am

i'm kind of suspecting cfdisk is just loading the first drive it sees, and cfdisk is *not* an all-the-drives-at-one-time maintenance tool, so you're thinking it isn't finding your drive. you do your work on one and then save/close it out and then maybe do the next.

I never thought of that. I will try that
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Re: Hard Drive configuration
By: Bogomips to All on Mon May 12 2025 10:44 am

In and attempt to have a dual boot laptop

Ive been trying to get get the slackware install to recognize the D: drive on install.

After trying every scenerio online. I still come up short.

I was thinking of changing the physical location of the drive?

Out of the box (2018) it was setup in RAID config.

The BIOS shows the two drives as
First HDD none
Second HDD none
Third HDD IntelSSDlkji (180.G)
fourth HDD sd2000louol (2000.3G)

Was wondering if I could move the D: drive to the first or seconds spot?

And any other actions I would need to take?

*SOLVED*

Result, cfdisk is not my friend.
Partitioned the D: drive in windows and used fdisk during install.

Thank you everyone for helping me figure this out

When I saw the drive visible with lsblk, it dawned on me to just try and force the issue with fdisk.

Now LILO is my only issue, but am able to logon to slackware with the install media. USB stick. And Ill probably just leave it like it is, and only log into widows if I have to.

Thanks again, everyone.
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Re: Re: Hard Drive configuration
By: fusion to Bogomips on Tue May 13 2025 10:17 am

i'm kind of suspecting cfdisk is just loading the first drive it sees, and cfdisk is *not* an all-the-drives-at-one-time maintenance tool, so you're thinking it isn't finding your drive. you do your work on one and then save/close it out and then maybe do the next.

That is *exactly* what was happening. so i partitioned the drive in windows and use *fdisk* to set the labels of the partitions.

Thank You
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