Linux cannot see hard drive

From: L-Plates (lplates_at_ukonline.co.uk)
Date: 09/29/04 

Date: 29 Sep 2004 04:11:02 -0700

Hi guys,

I have a problem with my linux install that is driving me up the wall,
please help! The problem lies with my hard disks and partitions.

Brief Machine spec:

AMD Athlon 1800+ XP
640MB RAM
40GB IDE HDD (Connected to primary IDE port on MoBo)
40GB SCSI HDD (Connected to Hewlett Packard RAID card)
Dual Boot SuSE 9.1 Pro / Win XP Pro
KDE 3.3.3

I originally had the following partitions:

SCSI Disk
---------
Windows XP (C:\ Drive) - NTFS
Shared Data - NTFS

IDE Disk
--------
SuSE Swap - Swap
SuSE / - Reiser

Everything was running great until I decided to reformat the Shared
Data partition to use FAT32 so that data could be more reliably shared
between SuSE and Windows.

I formatted the partition as FAT32 using Windows but when I booted to
SuSE the partition is no longer available. Not only is the partition
not available but it would appear the Linux no longer sees the whole
SCSI HDD.

If I try mounting the drive using mount /dev/sdax /mnt I recieve an
error:

mount: /dev/sdax is not a valid block device.

The output of fdisk -l only shows the IDE HDD (hda). I'm at work at
the moment so I can't actually post the output.

I know that the SCSI is connected properly and working fine as Windows
boots from this drive and Windows can see all the partitions no probs.
Also, if I run the SuSE install program (from the boot CD) the
partitioning recommended by YaST includes the SCSI drive with all its
partitions so I'm convinced this isn't a hardware fault.

My question is why could Linux have lost sight of the SCSI drive and
why does the SuSE install program see it without any problems? How can
I get it back? All help is very much appreciated.

Please note that although I am a Windows administrator I am relatively
new to Linux.

Thanks in advance,
Dave.

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