I've been fooling around on google and forums for a while now searching, but I haven't found anything that has helped yet...

Problem 1:
I installed Fedora Core 7 on my home server (why, oh why didn't I install FC6 again) and now when it's finally configured I've concluded that it's totally impossible to get libata to recognize my Samsung SV1204H. The drive is 120GB but it detects it as 33GB (less heads). I am absolute no fan of libata partly because of this and partly because drives are refereed to as /dev/sdx instead of /dev/hdx. It's like if M$ would start calling "c:\" "1:\" instead...

Problem 2:
The drive won't stay in standby mode. I can force them to standby with hdparm, also set standby timeout, but after ~10min something wakes them up. Even drives that aren't even mounted.

Any help would be appreciated, otherwise I guess I'll have to spend a few days setting up FC6 again

I HATE libATA! Any distro that I want to use that uses libATA gets a custom compiled kernel before I'll use it. You can re-compile the kernel in FC7 to use the IDE drivers instead of libATA. I've done this in Zenwalk. Works like a charm.

http://www.howtoforge.com/kernel_compilation_fedora