Try jumpering the drive Cable Select with the blue plug on the motherboard and the black plug on the hard drive. I assume you are using an 80 wire ide cable.

Last I read about it, CS (Cable Select) was pretty much a dead feature, whose specs were either never implemented, or adhered to, by most hardware manufacturers. Not sure why it still even exists.

I suppose it's not going to hurt to try it, but it's not likely it will help

Sasha

It certainly wasn't dead on an ICH5 vintage motherboard and BIOS. In fact, Cable Select was the standard, preferred method of jumpering by most system builders back then. The standard has become irrelevant with the prevalence of SATA on modern motherboards.

However, I'm more puzzled by this quote which may shed some light on the problem:

Are you trying to boot off this drive and if so, how and what did you install on it?

First page...

I was referring to the Standard CMOS feature page. On my motherboard, if I select the IDE Channel Master to which my HDD is connected and press Enter, I can either have the BIOS configure the HDD or configure it manually.

Are any of the BIOS setting for SATA or AHCI enabled? That might explain the designation of the HDD as "c"

This is the only drive I have, so yes I am trying to boot off of it.
I have four different Linux distro intalled on it and they boot up fine.

Yes I am aware of that.

My bios does not support Sata, I do not know what AHCI is, but I do not see it in the bios anywhere.

I think I've figured it out. I asked that you post your ide configuration which you never did but I can guess pretty accurately what that is. I would guess that you have two ide devices, one on each ide channel/cable, an optical drive on ide0 and your hard drive on ide1. Neither ide channel has a slave ide device.

Given that configuration, a linux kernel operating in ide legacy mode will enumerate the ide devices as follows:

IDE0
master - hda
slave - hdb

IDE1
master - hdc
slave - hdd

A linux kernel operating in libata mode will designate the first detected hard drive sda, the second sdb, etc. It will designate the first detected optical drive as sr0, the second optical drive sr1.

Given the above, it is clear that some distros you are using have opted to use ide legacy in which case the drive on IDE1 Master is designated hdc regardless of what's on any other ide channel. There's nothing magical going on with the system sensing the two replaced hard drives and giving the new one the next letter, 'c'. Those which designate the hard drive sda, if any, are using the kernel's more modern libata. There could be many reasons for opting for ide legacy over libata or the reverse, but that appears to be what's going on. It's just the way the kernel is configured and interacting with how the hard drives are setup in your bios. The change from sd* to hd*, if it occurred on all your installed distros, is due, in all probability, to a change in your bios configuration.

If you could please post exactly what options are available in your BIOS setup for your ide hard drive configuration, there may be an option which someone will recognize that switches things back so the kernel starts using libata again. ICH5 chipsets go back to the early 2000s and I really can't remember what the typical BIOS options were for those motherboards. However, if your system is running OK, there's really nothing wrong with running in ide legacy mode. Personally, I find the ide implementation in libata inferior to the legacy ide in the kernel.

kilgoretrout

I regret that I did not include all the info that you had requested.

Regarding.......
could you run that by me slowly what this information would consist of and I will with the best of my ability try to provide that for you.

If this is what you were refering to, then we are good to go:
thanks again,
OBnascar

First off, you're right, the ide channels are IDE0 and IDE1 not IDE1 and IDE2. I've edited my previous post to correct this. It's been a while since I've dealt with ide drives. It's pretty simple. You have two ide ports on your motherboard, one is designated IDE0 and the other is designated IDE1. The linux kernel operating in ide legacy mode will assign device files to ide devices based solely on where they are connected on the ide bus.

As I posted above, you probably have your optical drive on one ide cable and your hard drive on a separate ide cable. Both drives are in the master postion so your optical drive would be designagted hda and your hard drive would be designagted hdc for a linux kernel in ide legacy mode.

Please confirm that this how you have your system setup.

1 members found this post helpful.

I agree.....
You got me here though....what is IDEO ?
I can not confirm until I understand what IDEO is.......lol

IDE0 (that's IDE-ZERO) refers to the first parallel IDE connector on the motherboard.
If two IDE drives are connected to it, by parallel IDE cable, they would be referred to as IDE0.0 and IDE0.1, where 0.0 is the master, and 0.1 is the slave. In Linux kernel-speak, these devices would be referred to as HDA and HDB.

If there is a second IDE connector on your motherboard, it would be referred to as IDE1 (that's IDE-ONE) and by the same logic as above, two devices connected to this second IDE connector, would be known as IDE1.0 and IDE1.1, or in kernel-speak, HDC and HDD.
Hope that helps clarify?

Further, if you open up your computer, and look closely around the IDE connectors on the motherboard, they *should* be labelled as IDE0 and IDE1, (or sometimes, PATA0 and PATA1)

Sasha

Well, there seemed to be one thing that I did not check out that was at one point in this tread recommended to me:
Unfortunetly I did not try this but it turned out it did solve most of the issue. I just switched the cables on the motherboard and now I have hda and/or sda instead of hdc. I can live with that.

Gparted and Clonezilla sees the HD now as hda. I am booting 8 linux distros on this computer and only one sees it as hda, the rest all see it as sda. So I am sure that indeed is a kernel thing why they show up different.

I appologize for any confusion I created but I am greatful for all of the prompt responses I recieved, you were all great and I appreciate it.

GrapefruiTgirl, I never was able to figure out the IDEO thingie, when I get time I will do more studing on it.

thanks all,
regards,
OBnascar