SATA drive not recognized ? [SOLVED]

kb5won · n00b Joined: 23 Dec 2004 Posts: 4 Location: Allen, Texas

I am unable to use my SATA drive under my current installation.
/dev/hda = regular ATA drive where Linux is installed (this works fine)
/dev/sda = SATA drive I want to use, which shows up when I boot from the liveCD, but I get errors when I try to reference the drive:

Arainach · l33t Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 609

Make sure that the SATA driver module is loaded. On the 2.6 kernel, I had to modprobe sata_via before I was able to see my SATA drives; I'm not certain what the comparable modules are for the 2.4 kernels.

kb5won · n00b Joined: 23 Dec 2004 Posts: 4 Location: Allen, Texas

ok, the option "SATA support" is enabled, (compiled into kernel?) not compiled as a module.

Is it possible I also need to load a module?

Supaiku · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 22 Oct 2004 Posts: 128

You deffinatly want it in kernel, but you need more than SATA support. You need to have the low level driver for it. What card/motherboard do you have?

kb5won · n00b Joined: 23 Dec 2004 Posts: 4 Location: Allen, Texas

I am using the onboard SATA controller of the Intel D865GBF motherboard. (ICH5).

I don't find any SATA drivers on Intel's website for this board. I am thinking you might be talking about another type of driver though?

Supaiku · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 22 Oct 2004 Posts: 128

I'm thinking you need the following in your kernel:
SCSI Device support -> SCSI low level drivers -> SATA Support -> Intel PIIX/ICH SATA Support
And then the rest of the stuff you need for SATA

Though I don't know for sure, you could give it a shot or search around alittle to make sure.

EDIT: the below link is everything you need, just an official version of the above:D
This should be all you need

Also, why not use 2.6?

kimchi_sg · Advocate Joined: 26 Nov 2004 Posts: 2969

BlastM · Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 10:05 am Post subject:

Mate, do yourself a favour and just accept that libsata support is not working for you now, nor will it ever.

Use the older, IDE version of the SATA support. It worked for me straight out of the box, and I didn't have to build the entire SCSI subsystem just for a non-SCSI harddisk (thankyou native ATA CD/DVD writing support!)

racoontje · Veteran Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Posts: 1290

What are you talking about?

libata is the greatest thing to happen to SATA Linux support. There's a reason the IDE driver is deprecated :-\

kb5won · n00b Joined: 23 Dec 2004 Posts: 4 Location: Allen, Texas

Problem solved:
although I had SATA support and Intel ICH SATA support <*> enabled, I had the upper level options like "SCSI support" <M> selected as modules instead of <*> compiled with kernel.

Since I wasn't loading the SCSI module, the SATA hardware was never recgonized. ??

I recompliled the kernel, and all is well now! Thanks very much for all the help.