First SATA drive - not working

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Oct 01, 2007 at 10:06:51AM -0400, Giles Orr wrote:
> Debian testing, kernel 2.6.21-2-k7.  It's auto-loading the sata_via
> kernel module.
> 
> I'm still not seeing a drive.  Here's an extract from
> /var/log/messages (in the name of brevity, I've included only the
> stuff I thought was related - I hope I haven't snipped too much):
> 
> ...
> Oct  1 09:47:06 glo kernel: sata_via 0000:00:0f.0: routed to hard irq line 11
> Oct  1 09:47:06 glo kernel: ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x00019000 ctl
> 0x00019402 bmdma 0x0001a000 irq 16
> Oct  1 09:47:06 glo kernel: ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x00019800 ctl
> 0x00019c02 bmdma 0x0001a008 irq 16
> Oct  1 09:47:06 glo kernel: scsi0 : sata_via
> ...
> Oct  1 09:47:06 glo kernel: ata1: SATA link down 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 1
> SControl 300)
> Oct  1 09:47:06 glo kernel: ATA: abnormal status 0x80 on port 0x00019007
> Oct  1 09:47:06 glo kernel: scsi1 : sata_via
> Oct  1 09:47:06 glo kernel: ata2: SATA link down 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 0
> SControl 300)
> Oct  1 09:47:06 glo kernel: ATA: abnormal status 0x7F on port 0x00019807
> Oct  1 09:47:06 glo kernel: Attempting manual resume
> ...

Hmm, so it sees the controller but it has errors trying to access the
drive.

> This message was almost but not quite identical before the insertion
> of the drive: prior to the drive, both said "abnormal status 0x7F."  I
> suppose that's progress.  I'm mostly using "fdisk -l /dev/sd?" to see
> if I have new, unformatted drive ...  What else would make sense?
> 
> This is really making me think that I should buy a SATA PCI card ...
> That would allow me to use SATA drives in any of my other computers,
> so it might solve not only the current problem but potentially some
> future ones as well.  Does that make sense?

It does make some sense if the onboard controller is really that much of
a pain.

What model is the drive again?

--
Len Sorensen
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