SATA Hard Drives

[Karl Larsen]

Steven Davies-Morris wrote:
> David Fox wrote:
>   
>> On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 10:34 AM, Karl Larsen <k5di at zianet.com>
>> wrote:
>>     
>>> The hard drive is a Western Digital, or it says it is. It could
>>> be Hitachi with that man on it I suppose.
>>>
>>>       
>>> What is AHTI?
>>>       
>> I think he means acpi, but I don't see the relevance of the answer
>> to the question. Might be a cabling issue, you see, so what does
>> acpi have to do with that?
>>
>> Mine's a recent (a few weeks old) 500 gb WDC SATA drive.
>>
>> ox at newbox:~$ sudo hddtemp /dev/sdc /dev/sdc: WDC WD5000AACS-00ZUB0:
>> 38°C
>>
>> It's a hot::) new WD-5000 something.
>>
>> So far no problems on this new build. I run the system 24/7.
>>
>> I did have some problems in the beginning with the bios seeing all
>> the drives (I have 2 ide's in the system but I don't have them
>> actively in use, just to bring stuff of if needed). But those just
>> seem to be cabling issues as it now works fine.
>>
>> I have heard trouble with various manufacturers of drives in the
>> past, even WDC and hitachi. FWIW, one of my other drives in the
>> system is a 7+ year old IBM Deskstar 30 (yes the famous Deathstar
>> drive, some of which were involved in a class action against IBM
>> (or Hitachi) but the drive is solid w/out any errors.
>>
>> (crossing fingers now) ;).
>>
>>
>>
>>     
>>> Karl
>>>       
>
> Something to consider. You're drive may not support AHTI. In which
> case it's "disappearing" was a 100% guarantee if AHTI was enabled.
> Also, you might need to run this drive in IDE legacy mode.
>
> By coincidence, when building a machine for a friend yesterday, his
> drive (a WD 250gb SATA) proved to be (a) a SATA, not SATA2 drive, and
> (b) disappeared when AHTI was activated. Setting the bios back to
> non-AHTI made it reappear. We were able to run in SATA native rather
> than IDE legacy mode.
>
> You'll want to check both these issues in your bios, before replacing
> data and/or power cables.
>   
    The problem today tells me clearly the serial cable is bad or one of 
the two sockets it plugs into is bad. My cable is red colored and came 
with the HD.

    My BIOS is just able to handle a SATA hd. It calls it a IDE drive on 
some panels.
A major problem which I am sure is BIOS is that the BIOS changes device 
number on a SATA and or IDE HD depending on how you check it.

    If you check from a LiveCD you see the IDE as (hd0) and the SATA as 
(hd1). This is fine. BUT...if you check from the SATA HD it is (hd0)! 
Check it on the IDE and the SATA becomes (hd1). If you think your good 
with Grub this situation will drive you to drink!

    That is why I have the IDE drive unplugged.

Karl


-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.
   PGP 4208 4D6E 595F 22B9 FF1C  ECB6 4A3C 2C54 FE23 53A7