Ubuntu 9.10 installation can't find my harddrive

Hi. I tried to install Ubuntu 9.10 a while ago. But in the partition manager within the installation software I couldn't find my hard drive. This was quite frustrating since I had no problems installing Ubuntu 9.04 (or older) and Ubuntu 9.10 did find my hard drive in GParted.

I think it's my motherboard that Ubuntu dosen't like. I have a Asus P5Q Pro (the hard drive is a Samsung 500GB SATA). However I did find a solution to this problem. Start the live-cd and do the following:

1. Cancel the installation (if you started it), shutdown the installation software (ubiquity)
   
2. Open terminal (alt+f2; write gnome-terminal)
3. Write "sudo gedit /lib/partman/init.d/30parted" in terminal
4. Comment out the following:

        # Skip devices that are part of a dmraid device
        if type dmraid >/dev/null 2>&1 && \
           dmraid -r -c >/dev/null 2>&1; then
            if part_of_sataraid $device && \
               [ -f /var/lib/disk-detect/activate_dmraid ]; then
                continue
            fi
        fi

It should look like this when you're ready:

#        # Skip devices that are part of a dmraid device
#        if type dmraid >/dev/null 2>&1 && \
#           dmraid -r -c >/dev/null 2>&1; then
#            if part_of_sataraid $device && \
#               [ -f /var/lib/disk-detect/activate_dmraid ]; then
#                continue
#            fi
#        fi

Now just save the file. Start the installation and your hard drive should be found. This worked for me at least. Of course you shouldn't do this if your hard drive actually is a part of a dmraid. In my case my hard drive was tagged as part of a dmraid falsely.

I'm actually a bit disappointed at Ubuntu 9.10 compared to Ubuntu 9.04. Ubuntu 9.10 doesn't boot sometimes, just hangs in the boot process and doesn't write any information about why. And it doesn't boot faster then Ubuntu 9.04, or at least it doesn't feel as it boots faster. However if it's working as it should (compatible hardware is used) it's very good. The sound configuration manager isn't even comparable with the old one, it's much better. Everything looks a bit nicer and it's very stable.

Use this solution (as all solutions I publish here) at your own risk. If you have critical data I wouldn't recommend you to try this solution without taking a backup.