General questions from a noob. Please help.

[winlinmac12]

Okay...so I'm kind of at the end of the metaphorical leash now...with seemingly no where to go that I haven't already. What I mean by this is that I simply don't know what to do anymore. Oh and my current specs are in the signature area.

 

I've downloaded Kalyway 10.5.2 AMD Intel DVD and I burned it correctly. It runs fine. I formatted my portable maxtor 160gb hdd to a Mac OS Extended format because it would not recognize the exsistance of my 2 internal hard drives. Weird? Maybe it's just my copy of Kalyway but as I understood, Mac OS can, at the very least...and most, recognize NTFS formatted drives and media and read from them. So why does it not recognize my int. hard drives.

 

Furthermore...why didn't it recognize my secondary internal hard drive, which ideally I would like to install Leo on since I got rid of ubuntu, after I formatted it to a FAT32 file system. I also understood it that Mac OS can read and write to and from FAT32. Again...weird.

 

This has become ultimately more difficult for me than I could have imagined. I am quite tech savvy...much more so than most people I know, and yet...this seeminly easy, one to two day task, has stumped me for well over two weeks.

 

Someone tell me this is easier than I think it is. :-p

 

My goals are to do the following:

 

1. Install Leopard (the newest/most stable distro if possible) onto my secondary internal hard drive since the OS only takes up around 7 Gbs out of the 12.9 I have available or get it to run off of my portable maxtor hdd...which I intalled successfully...or so it said.

 

2. Get Leopard, once installed properly, to boot correctly either from the secondary int. hdd or from my portable hdd.

 

I don't know if I need to install some sort of specialty boot manager or not.

 

3. Not have my system crash whilst doing all of this.

 

So...the following questions are quite simple:

 

1. How do I go about completing the goals I listed above?

 

2. Did I do something wrong?

 

and,

 

3. Well I hadn't really thought of three...but perhaps later I will figure out another question. :-p

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

Winlinmac12

[Beerkex'd]

If the system doesn't see any drives at all, it doesn't have anything to do with how they're formatted or not formatted. Regardless of the OS being able to read or write to this or that file system, the hard drives should still appear in Disk Utility and System Profiler.

 

If they don't appear there, you have a problem with your BIOS settings or the drivers for your SATA/PATA controllers/Motherboard Southbridge. Or at the worst, your hardware just isn't compatible.

[winlinmac12]

If the system doesn't see any drives at all, it doesn't have anything to do with how they're formatted or not formatted. Regardless of the OS being able to read or write to this or that file system, the hard drives should still appear in Disk Utility and System Profiler.

 

If they don't appear there, you have a problem with your BIOS settings or the drivers for your SATA/PATA controllers/Motherboard Southbridge. Or at the worst, your hardware just isn't compatible.

Okay...so how do I set my BIOS up properly?

[verdant]

Okay...so how do I set my BIOS up properly?

 

Post screen shots (i.e. photos) of your BIOS parameter menus and sub-menus with the current settings and settings options......

 

Also see here.......if you have not done so on your own.....