Aha, well I've got the computer now, I'll see when I get it up and running.

So I can just plug my ATA drive into the PATA slot?

Anywho, I'll see what I can do, and I'll be back here...

Yep, plug pata into ata and away you go.

No, motherboards do not explode. They just fry or cook. In order to explode, you need pressure. The only component on the motherboard that will explode is capacitors. Usually the capacitors in the power supply will go first because they are under voltage and temperature stress.

Like I said earlier active heatsinks (heatsinks with an aid of fans) for chipsets is bad. Fans are noisy, unreliable, and produces a hotspot. It does not matter how well it is designed. It is still bad. I recommend motherboard models with heatpipe or passive cooling. Heatpipe uses a pipe that is fill with special liquid that reacts to heat. Heatpipes transfers the heat to another location to release the heat mostly around the CPU or outside of the computer case. Replacing chipset cooling with a better one is hard because most of the motherboards place the chipset near PCI Express or PCI slots. Water cooling could be done, but it costs a lot of money to get it started.

Linux SATA support for Intel, VIA, SIS, ATI, nVidia, ALI, Silicon Image, and Promise controllers are poor. I recommend not using these controllers for SATA hard drives. The listed Highpoint controllers are reliable and stable under 24/7 use. Anyways, there is always a possibility of corruption when using DMA. 3ware SATA controllers are also good for 24/7 operation.

I do not like ASUS boards because they are flismly or not thick to handle the vibrations and over-sized CPU heatsinks. I prefer ABIT boards because they are thick and they have cheaper models that have heatpipe cooling for the chipsets. I sometimes suggest Gigabyte boards too.

Okaay...

How do I install Linux on SATA though, for example Slackware.

Does Slackware include the drivers for my SATA motherboard? And if it needs drivers, how do you get the install CD to recognise your HDD?

Do you, by any chance, work for Highpoint or 3ware? :) I have had no issues with onboard NVidia SATA controller (nForce4). I think it's very much like Lazlow said - very few people had data corruption issues, and those issues have now been fixed. The Linux SATA development team consider sata_nv to be production ready. I would have no qualms using SATA on a production box.

So am I just booting Slackware's sata.i?

And it works?

When I installed Gentoo, I chose a kernel that had SATA support and yes - "it just worked". Completely unlike Windows XP :)

This is sort of weird.

A minute ago, I was told that it is difficult to get Linux and SATA working, now I'm told it is easy.

Does Slackware's sata.i automatically support my motherboard's SATA (nForce4 Ultra?).

Meaning sata.i already contains sata_nv which is stable and good to use?

Or do I need to install nVidia's sata_nv nForce drivers?

????

Here's the link to the official web page for Linux ATA. It describes the features found in 2.6.17-git2 (which is probably more recent than is available in the installers, but the nvidia drivers haven't changed that much in a while). There's a maturity table at the bottom.

http://linux-ata.org/driver-status.html

You won't need to install nvidia's sata drivers, since the required sata drivers will be in the kernel. All you'll need to do is ensure that the kernel that you use day to day has the drivers either compiled in, or compiled as a module.

As I said before - I've never had any problems running SATA on my nForce4 board, and I've got 4 SATA drives plugged into it. I don't appear to have had any data corruption issues - and let me tell you I would notice!

Good luck

Vampirite

It is more than possible that the installation issues I spoke of have now been cleared up (not sure either way). It may very well be that it is now as easy as gzunk says.

Lazlow

git kernels are experimental, so be careful. Only use them when you have to.

If you use the latest stable kernel, you should be ok with SATA, but backup more often than usual. For SCSI or sdX devices, make sure you specify a label when formating partitions. Using labels makes it easier to boot up Linux more predictably. If software for controllers are setup as modules, include them in initrd to load them up at boot up. Use mkinitrd to help you make an initrd file.

No I do not work for Highpoint and 3ware. I do have Highpoint 370 and Highpoint 370/372 based controllers which the RocketRAID 1520 uses. I only read about 3ware and there are no problems yet. I am not fan of any controller, but when I see and read that a controller is stable and reliable under use, I use it. Promise controllers does too much black magic behind the scenes, so I would never consider them.

Good stuff.

I need to test the computer first, if it is working and stable, then I'll install Linux.

Also since I only want to install Slackware 11.0, I have to wait for that to be released. ;)

I have a VIA integrated sata controller and it works great. The reason I first had to use a pata drive is because I couldn't figure out how to boot a sata drive from the BIOS(stupid me).

@Vampirite--It doesn't matter how old you are, just how much you know.;-)

Right
I have that particular board and I have yet to find a feature that I need and doesn't work.
I have single sata-hdd pata-dvd-burner and dual core.
I don't find the chipset fan loud at all. It adjusts it's speed according to the chipset temp and mine is running so silently it's not audible 1 meter away. Also, the temp sensors are working which on some forums seem to have been an issue. Running Kubuntu 6.06.

Okay, got it running.

But I haven't downloaded Slackware 11.0 yet so it's still running Windows.

I have no complaints about it, it is a great computer. Fast, powerful, with plenty of features.

However...

The hard disk is loud. Very loud. It is a Seagate and I've never used them before. I've always had Maxtor and they are quiet and fast.

But this Seagate one is loud. When you move data or use the hard disk in an intensive way (such as partitioning), It is loud, and it you can hear a sort of buzzing noise as it writes to the disk.

Now, is it a faulty/dying hard disk? Or do all Seagates happen to be like this? I don't want to be losing data!