First SATA drive - not working

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sat, Sep 29, 2007 at 03:33:26PM -0400, Giles Orr wrote:
> Thanks to everyone who posted suggestions.  I tried another cable, no
> joy.  Today I took the drive back and the store showed that the drive
> itself is fine.  So we're down to a very limited number of options.
> When I told the store guy the motherboard I'm using (Gigabyte
> 7VT600-P-RZ - and I do have the most recent BIOS) he said that he'd
> worked with that generation of Gigabytes and the drive WON'T be
> recognized by the BIOS: you have to boot into the OS and load the
> right drivers (he uses only Windows).  So I went home and put the disk
> back in the computer and booted Debian testing kernel 2.6.21-2-k7 and
> ... no luck.  The chipset is apparently the VIA Apollo KT600, and the
> sata_via kernel module is loading, but I don't see a new drive.  I
> don't even know how it would be designated ...  Is it /dev/sd? ?  Is
> there any program I should run?  I don't see anything that looks new
> or different in /var/log/messages , although I have to admit I'm not
> an expert and I didn't use a fine tooth comb, but ... there doesn't
> appear to be a new drive.

Well is far as I can tell from the documentation, it should work.

It seems the manual says the first SATA port (SATA0) is the one closest
to the PCI slots.  So connect the drive to there.  Apparently RAID mode
is weird on that board, so you may have to set it to IDE mode instead
for the SATA part.

The guy is correct that windows needs help to see SATA drives, but
windows xp always needed help for SATA.

Make sure 'Onchip SATA' is enabled.

Make sure you use a distribution new enough to support the chipset.

--
Len Sorensen
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