SATA drives and smartmontools.

[Adam Funk]

According to the FAQ [1] "Smartmontools should work correctly with
SATA drives under both Linux 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, if you use the
standard IDE drivers in drivers/ide. ...  Typically, to force an SATA
disk to run using the standard (non-libata) drivers, you must use the
BIOS to select "legacy mode" for the controller. If the IDE driver
doesn't support your particular SATA controller, or the controller
doesn't have a legacy interface, then only libata can be used. Unless
the hard disk controller on the system motherboard is Intel, VIA or
nVidia, standard IDE drivers may not work".

Is there any possible harm from trying out the legacy mode in the
BIOS?

Will it change the /dev/ names of hard drives and partitions?

(For reference I think the snippet of lshw output in [2] refers to my
SATA controller.)

Thanks,
Adam


[1]
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/#testinghelp

[2]
*-ide:1
     description: IDE interface
     product: MCP51 Serial ATA Controller
     vendor: nVidia Corporation
     physical id: e
     bus info: pci at 00:0e.0
     logical name: scsi0
     logical name: scsi1
     version: a1
     width: 32 bits
     clock: 66MHz
     capabilities: ide bus_master cap_list scsi-host
     configuration: driver=sata_nv
     resources: ioport:9f0-9f7 ioport:bf0-bf3 ioport:970-977 ioport:b70-b73 ioport:e000-e00f iomemory:fe02d000-fe02dfff irq:209