Do SATA drives have "master" and "slave" options?

[Melhisedek]

I'm asking because I'm trying to install Ubuntu (tried all versions from 7.10 to 9.04) and always failing at the last step "installing GRUB".

I think it might be my hardware or at least how it is set up.

Have two SATA drives:

1.5 TB one:
3 partitions and one of them is C: with Windows 7 on it (had Vista before but same problem)
100GB free where I'm trying to install Ubuntu

320 GB one:
3 partitions just dumping stuff there


I have tried to disconnect the smaller drive and just have one but no go. I wonder if it is some kind of BIOS setting I'm missing or perhaps that drive should be "master" or something but I thought just IDE had those.

Any ideas?

[thideras]

There are no master and slave drives.

Does it give you more information other than just "failing"?

[cyberfish]

How are you partitioning your 100GB for Ubuntu?

Can you install GRUB manually from the Live-CD? (grub-install)

[Melhisedek]

Well I just used "Use largest continuous free space" option in the installer. I believe it formats 94 Gigs as ext3 and 3-4 gigs as swap. It tries to install GRUB to /dev/sda

Here is fdisk -l

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x01940193

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 12748 102398278+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 12749 182401 1362737722+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 12749 88911 611779266 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 89238 168377 635691764 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7 168378 181826 108029061 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 181827 182401 4618656 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xed42928a

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 6902 55440283+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdb2 * 6903 13914 56323890 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb3 13915 38913 200804467+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb5 1 6902 55440252 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdc: 1999 MB, 1999568384 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000330b0

here is what var/log/messages says:

Jul 1 22:06:30 ubuntu grub-installer: info: Installing grub on '/dev/sda'
Jul 1 22:06:30 ubuntu grub-installer: info: grub-install supports --no-floppy
Jul 1 22:06:30 ubuntu grub-installer: info: Running chroot /target grub-install --no-floppy "/dev/sda"
Jul 1 22:06:30 ubuntu grub-installer: Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
Jul 1 22:06:30 ubuntu grub-installer: Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub
Jul 1 22:06:36 ubuntu grub-installer: The file /boot/grub/stage1 not read correctly.
Jul 1 22:06:36 ubuntu grub-installer: error: Running 'grub-install --no-floppy "/dev/sda"' failed.

Also where is mbr located? is it /dev/sda ?