Hello!

I have a SATA hd on SiI 3512A (+ two IDE drives). Running XP but would like to try Linux. The PCLinuxOS livecd sees all the drives, but it doesn't see the contents of the SATA drive (no files, no folders) and the installation wizard claims it's corrupt.

I need to be able to use the SATA drive from Linux. But the real problem is that I'm afraid to install PCLinuxOS to the IDE drives because my XP is installed on the SATA drive and I guess grub wouldn't see it either.

Please see the device information from Control center below. The file system is NTFS (just like the IDE drives).

Any help appreciated!

With regards, Mikael

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Identification
Disk identifier: ‎ATA Maxtor 6L200M0

Media class: ‎hd

Bus identification
Vendor ID: ‎0x0000

Device ID: ‎0x0000

Sub vendor ID: ‎0x0000

Sub device ID: ‎0x0000

Connection
Bus: ‎SCSI

Channel: ‎0

Logical unit number: ‎0

Device
Old device file: ‎/dev/sda

Misc
Geometry: ‎// (CHS)

Disk controller: ‎2

Module: ‎sata_sil

While the system may recognize the hardware, it's often necessary to mount a drive (partition) before you can see the data.

From the live CD, open a terminal and enter "fisk -l". Post the results here. (You might have to do "su" first to get root powers---or when you log into the live linux, you can log in as root.) Also, tell us more about what is in the various drives---for example, you may need to re-size one or more partitions to make space for Linux.

If the system recognizes the drive, GRUB will have no issue with it. The only quirk is that the numbering in GRUB can get confusing with mixed SATA and IDE drives.

Thanks for your reply.
fdisk -l output below (I presume this is what you mean?).
My main XP installation is on sda1. hda1 contains another XP installation and is currently used to booting. I'm planning to resize this partition to fit PCLinuxOS. Everything else is just data.

How do I mount the SATA drive? I'm really a newbie in this

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Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120060444672 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14596 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 3932 31583758+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 3933 14596 85658580 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/hdb: 122.9 GB, 122942324736 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14946 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 14946 120053713+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sda: 203.9 GB, 203928109056 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24792 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 3932 31583758+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 3933 24792 167557950 7 HPFS/NTFS

Open a terminal and enter "cd /mnt", then "ls". there may already be a mount point set up---eg sda1 or sda2. If so, you may be able to simply enter "mount sda1". In the limit, you would need to create a mount point and then mount:

mkdir somename
mount /dev/sda1 somename

Note that you mount partitions, not drives.

To do it in the GUI, look in My computer --> Storage Media. At least on my system, the icons are labelled according to capacity (dumb). If you find one that looks like the right one, right-click and select "mount". Then you'll be able to view the contents.

Thanks a lot! I'll try this.

Tried mounting, didn't help. Even the SATA partitions seem to be already automatically mounted. Still, I only see the files in the IDE drives.

[root@dhcppc0 root]# cd /mnt
[root@dhcppc0 mnt]# ls
cdrom/ floppy/ win_c/ win_d/ win_e/ win_f/ win_g/

All these seem to be empty.

[root@dhcppc0 mnt]# mkdir media
[root@dhcppc0 mnt]# mount /dev/sda2 media
mount: /dev/sda2 already mounted or media busy

Same thing in GUI: /dev/sda? already mounted.

Control Center / Hardware / Config tool for sda says:

I can not read the partition table of device mapper/pdc_bfeabeia, it's too corrupted for me

First, those directories would be empty until something is mounted to them.

Second, do:
df -hT
or
mount
to display what is already mounted.

Third, is there any entries in dmesg regarding your Sata drive, and sda1, sda2?

Still working on this....

IDE and USB drives show up in df -hT or mount, after opening them in GUI. But not the SATA drive. Still, if I try to mount it, the system claims its already mounted or the directory (or what do you call it) is busy.

dmesg says the following (I don't know if the beginning of the output here is related to the SATA disk... I'm including everything that could be so . I also don't know what's the WD-7000 scsi card with failed installation in the end of this.

SCSI subsystem initialized
libata version 2.00 loaded.
Fusion MPT base driver 3.04.01
Copyright (c) 1999-2005 LSI Logic Corporation
squashfs: version 3.2-r2 (2007/01/15) Phillip Lougher
scsi: <fdomain> Detection failed (no card)
GDT-HA: Storage RAID Controller Driver. Version: 3.05
GDT-HA: Found 0 PCI Storage RAID Controllers
NCR53c406a: no available ports found
qlogicfas: Unknown symbol qlogicfas408_info
qlogicfas: Unknown symbol qlogicfas408_biosparam
qlogicfas: Unknown symbol qlogicfas408_setup
qlogicfas: Unknown symbol qlogicfas408_detect
qlogicfas: Unknown symbol qlogicfas408_ihandl
qlogicfas: Unknown symbol qlogicfas408_bus_reset
qlogicfas: Unknown symbol qlogicfas408_disable_ints
qlogicfas: Unknown symbol qlogicfas408_get_chip_type
qlogicfas: Unknown symbol qlogicfas408_abort
qlogicfas: Unknown symbol qlogicfas408_queuecommand
sata_sil 0000:01:0d.0: version 2.0
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APC3] enabled at IRQ 18
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:01:0d.0[A] -> Link [APC3] -> GSI 18 (level, high) -> IRQ 16
sata_sil 0000:01:0d.0: Applying R_ERR on DMA activate FIS errata fix
ata1: SATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0xF8E72080 ctl 0xF8E7208A bmdma 0xF8E72000 irq 16
ata2: SATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0xF8E720C0 ctl 0xF8E720CA bmdma 0xF8E72008 irq 16
scsi2 : sata_sil
ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
ata1.00: ATA-7, max UDMA/133, 398297088 sectors: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
ata1.00: ata1: dev 0 multi count 16
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100
scsi3 : sata_sil
ata2: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 310)
Vendor: ATA Model: Maxtor 6L200M0 Rev: BANC
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sda: 398297088 512-byte hdwr sectors (203928 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
SCSI device sda: 398297088 512-byte hdwr sectors (203928 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
sda: sda1 sda2
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
sym53c416.c: Version 1.0.0-ac
Failed initialization of WD-7000 SCSI card!

Hmmm, I don't know what the WD-7000 scsi card is either,
but I wonder if it could be confusing Linux!
You could try booting with noscsi (in some distros) to see if it helps.
(Yes I know Sata needs scsi to work.)


Also check if (for your distro) there is a special boot option for specifying/forcing Sata drive support!

Which version of distro are you using, and more specifically kernel?
I know some old kernels do not support Sata.

Just curious, does hdparm /dev/sda show anything?

I found out that the final PCLOS 2007 has occassional problems in mounting SATA drives. So I tried TR4, and it works fine!