Comment 3 for bug 1437648

Forwarding private mail which should have gone to the bug:

Hi, and thanks for your mail.
Well, after some help from askubuntu and some debugging it seems to have something to do with the live dvd changing the HPA configuration of the hard drives.
I used hdparm -N to check the hard drives and they had HPA enabled.
I used hdparm -N p5860533168 to disable HPA on all hard drives but /dev/sda always refuses to comply with I/O error. (That made me suspect that the configuration had already had a permanent change since boot time). After changing the sata cables so that it would be /dev/sdc, my main boot drive accepted to change the configuration, and HPA was disabled. When I changed the cable back and it was sda again, I boot into the 14.04 dvd and then both sda and sdb (which was sda during the cable change) went back to having HPA activated. I change sdb back to disabled but sda again refused with I/O error.
So no, I don't think it has anything to do with partitioning, it seems like the live dvd is doing something in the form of 'hdparm -N p5860531055 /dev/sda' when it boots.