[ctl-linux] SATA drives showing on PATA boot screen

[Scott_Purcell at Dell.com]

Check your BIOS or the BIOS of your SATA controller to see if it gives
an option to run in ATA or AHCI mode.  I this this is what you would see
if it is set to "ATA".  From what I understand, that is a legacy mode
that allows SATA to emulate PATA for older OSs (notably including
earlier versions of XP) that don't recognize AHCI mode.  It is the
default setting on many controllers and system boards with integrated
SATA.

Switching to AHCI mode should give better performance and switching
modes should be harmless to your data.

I had just installed Ubuntu 7.10 on a new system before I noticed that
setting last week -- I asked some experts about it, made the switch, and
everything just worked.  Although, I have to say, I hadn't noticed the
identification difference you describe so it is possible this is a
different issue -- it just sounds like it could be related.

I don't know anything about your other questions...

Scott Purcell


-----Original Message-----
From: linux-bounces+scott_purcell=dell.com at ctlug.org
[mailto:linux-bounces+scott_purcell=dell.com at ctlug.org] On Behalf Of
Larry Alkoff
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2007 5:24 PM
To: CTLUG; Ubuntu Help and User Discussions
Subject: [ctl-linux] SATA drives showing on PATA boot screen

On my Kubuntu computer with an Intel 945P Neo3 motherboard my SATA
drives show up on the boot screen as Primary Master, Pri Slave,
Secondary Master and Sec Slave.

Is it normal for PATA drives to show up on the boot screen with such a
designation?

I spent some time identifying which SATA plug was SDA1, SDA2, SDB1 and
SDB2.  Should I have bothered?

Do the listed designations have anything at all to do with how they
should be used?  For example, in a system with high traffic between two
drives you would probably want to assign different Primary IDE channels
to the two drives and put the CD-ROM on the least used Secondary
channel.

IOW, is it ok to just plug in the SATA devices into any unused channel?

I've already seen how the BIOS controlls the boot drive sequence.

One other question.  How can I boot up SATA drives with an additional
old PATA drive in the system?  The PATA seems to 'take over' and the
system tries to boot with that and ignore the boot order?

Larry

--
Larry Alkoff N2LA - Austin TX
Using Thunderbird on Linux
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