I have a new Dell XPS Gen with dual SATA harddrives and have now tried 4 distributions of Linux that do not recognize either harddrive: Redhat AS 3.0, Fedora Core 2&3, and Knoppix. I found a package that is supposed to fix this with new drivers, etc -> search for file name ata_piix-0.93c-1c.tar.gz I have included part of the readme file below. I followed these directions and it still didn't work. I'm now downloading Mandrake 10.1.

Any help?


This package provides an updated ata_piix SATA drivers for Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 3 (RHEL 3). Speficially, it provides the following:
- 4-port Intel ICH6 and ICH6R SATA controller support
- Fixes a bug in that allows the OS to boot from the SATA drive on
port 1 for the PowerEdge 700 and 750
- Fixes a bug for RHEL 3 Update 2 (2.4.21-15.EL kernel) that prevents
a PowerEdge 700 and 750 from booting when no CD ROM is present.

NOTE: All features and bug fixes that this package provides are contained in
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 3 and later.

Files in Package
1. dkms-1.10-1.noarch.rpm -- required for device driver RPMs
2. ata_piix-0.93c-1dkms.noarch.rpm -- DKMS enabled device driver RPM
3. ata_piix-0.93c-1dkms.src.rpm -- device driver source RPM. Supports x86
4. ata_piix-0.93c-dd-rhel3-i386-GU1U2.img-- device driver diskette image
for RHEL 3 Gold, Update 1, and Update 2, x86 architecture
5. ata_piix-1.00b-1dkms.noarch.rpm -- DKMS enabled device driver RPM. Supports
both x86 and x86_64 architectures. Only for RHEL 3 Update 2
6. ata_piix-1.00b-1dkms.src.rpm -- device driver source RPM
RHEL 3 Update 2, EM64T architecture
7. ata_piix-1.00b-dd-rhel3-x86_64-U2.img -- device driver diskette image
for RHEL 3 Update 2, x86_64 architecture.

Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3
For a new installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 or earlier, you
will need to use a device driver diskette image. Perform the following steps:
1. Copy the appropriate device driver diskette image to a Linux system
2. Put a floppy into the floppy drive
3. At a command prompt, type "dd if= of=/dev/fd0". This
will create your device driver diskette
4. Boot to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 media
5. When you receive the "boot:" prompt, type "linux dd"
6. Follow the instructions onscreen to proceed

The only way I could get Fedora to recognize the drive on my XPS Gen 4 was to go into the BIOS and tweak the SATA drive setting. You need to set it to 'Combination'. From the factory, it's set to some RAID setting. When you do this, however, if you're dual-booting into Windows, you'll need to set it back to the original setting each time you want to get back into Windows.

YES- this worked... but what a pain to have to change the BIOS everytime I want to switch between Windows and Linux... oh well... I guess this will work until a new release comes out to fix the problem...

Thanks again!
bryan

Can you change the setting to "Combination" and re-install Windows?

Please look at the post by jbetten, a solution was found for a Dell Dimension 8400:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...36#post1395336

Let me save you some download time. Mandrake 10.1 does not have the drivers we need. I just purchased a Dell 8400 with the Intel 925X/XE SMBus controller and the 82801FR SATA AHCI Controller and alas no driver exist here. I had hoped that Fedcore 3 would be the savior.
Let me know if you find a distribution.

What should work is that you switch at startup the BIOS to "autoraid/AHCI" for windows XP and "autoraid/ATA" for Linux. Combination mode will recognize only the first SATA disk.
Read the SATA/AHCI story http://www.linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html and "google" ("linux sata dell 8400" or "knoppix dell sata") around at various linux fora if you like.

It has changed now with the new kernels (2.6.x with "extra's" or 2.6.11) where the AHCI controller will now recognize the SATA drives.
What I did for installing SuSe 9.2 for a Dell Dimension 8400, with SATA/AHCI setup, is at
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportfor...essage.id=5859

Installing other distro's such as Gentoo, Mandrake, Fedora etc on other (ICH6R AHCI) SATA controllers may be similar. Essence: SATA is not supported in standard linux distributions, until recently. Install via "autoraid/ata" and update the kernel (www.kernel.org) to 2.6.11. Thereafter you can boot both Linux and Windows XP from 'autoraid/ahci'.
SuSe 9.3 (with kernel 2.6.11) is announced for mid April. I am confident that all major releases will do similarly now.

For a LiveCD to test your PC you can try Kanotix 2005-1 (kernel 2.6.8-kanotix), from http://www.kanotix.org, sothat you will see that your Dell 8400 can work with such a kernel,
or the new Knoppix V3.8 (with a kernel 2.6.11, but german version), when available via http://www.knoppix.org, but for now google for "knoppix_v3.8".
Backup info: a torrent can also be found at http://www.winfuture.de/news,19477.html
or http://www.winfuture.de/downloadstar...4838,1349.html
or http://www.boegenielsen.dk:6969/

Knoppix boot on SMP PCs: knoppix lang=us acpi=off
On a US keybaord the "=" is at "Shift 0".

I'm considering buying a PowerEdge SC420 or 1420, do you guys know if I would have this problem(or any others) with RHEL4 (and software RAID1, thru RHEL not BIOS)on it? I'd post a new topic but this one seems pretty similar. It just says dual channel onboard SATA in the specs on their site, and you can get RHEL3 pre-installed.

Thank you for your replies, since I am a newbie I shall use the newbie solution which is to wait until a distribution ships with the 2.6.11 kernel (SATA support for my chip set). At the present time it looks as though Suse 9.3 will be the distribution of choice.
Since I have never used dual booting with WinXP, I am thinking about using lilo/grub to select the operating system and XFS filesystem. Is there any problems with this approach?