My bios can see my harddrive, but Ubuntu can't. I can't move past the partition faze of the install. Please help.

So the installer doesn't detect your harddisk? Which model harddisk is it?

When it comes time to partition my drive I have no options, so I can't move forward. GNOME couldn't find a drive ether. My drive is a Seagate Barracuda 4. Windows is not on this drive. I am trying to do a fresh install of Ubuntu. The computer is a Hp Pavilion 8860.

Using Ubuntu install cd: open a terminal from menu Applications->Accessories->Terminal and type:
sudo fdisk -l
Please copy and paste the result here.
Thank you.

To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
See "man sudo_root" for details.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -1
fdisk: invalid option -- 1

Usage: fdisk [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK Change partition table
       fdisk -l [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK List partition table(s)
       fdisk -s PARTITION Give partition size(s) in blocks
       fdisk -v Give fdisk version
Here DISK is something like /dev/hdb or /dev/sda
and PARTITION is something like /dev/hda7
-u: give Start and End in sector (instead of cylinder) units
-b 2048: (for certain MO disks) use 2048-byte sectors
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

The command to type is:
sudo fdisk -l
-l is lowercase L

HTH

 I typed sudo fdisk -l (lowercase L) and nothing happened.

We must try to investigate if Ubuntu can recognize your Hard Disk:

a) sudo fdisk -l it must give you some infos about the hard-disk partitions
b) open a terminal and type
sudo lshw -C disk

Please copy and paste the result messages or errors here.

HTH

Fdisk -l won't probably return anything if there are no disks detected.

I have an ubuntu here installed on Barracuda IV (60GB, ST360021A), it's been detected without any problems.

Either the disk is broken or it not setup properly in the bios (basically all should be set to automatic detection.
Can you check if anything else recognizes it (windows installer, another linux installer, or by plugging the disk to another computer)?

If is something related with hard-disk you can try the seatool from seagate site to check your hard-disk status.
Download seatools for Dos and run it: it will make a bootable floppy that you can use to check your hard-disk.
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

HTH

I am having the same problem, but my hard drive currently has Fedora 6 loaded and I want to overwrite it with Ubuntu (small drive). I can choose the install option "Boot from first hard disk" and it will boot the Fedora so I'm assuming it knows there is a hard disk present. I'm new to Linux so any help would be greatly appreciated.

I hope everyone has enjoyed thinking about my issue, however, my hard drive was missing it's jumper pin. I put one in from a spare drive & everything works fine. I guess my advice is; Check hardware first & don't drink tequila when working on your systems.