SATA Support on Linux

shazam75 · 10-12-2005, 05:02 AM

HI

I am thinking of buying a SATA drive but hesitent because it may not work on Linux. Anyone else using SATA drives successfully - and on what Distribution ?

Regards,
Shelton.

vasudevadas · 10-12-2005, 05:19 AM

I am using a Maxtor SATA drive with Silicon Image Sil3112 SATA controller on Slackware 10.0 with a 2.6.7 kernel. It works fine.

shazam75 · 10-12-2005, 05:30 AM

Thanks - I have kernel-2.6.8 - does this matter?

Regards
Shelton.

okmyx · 10-12-2005, 05:31 AM

Its not so much the drive itself but the controller its connected to.

vasudevadas · 10-12-2005, 05:32 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by shazam75
Thanks - I have kernel-2.6.8 - does this matter?

No, it should be fine.

shazam75 · 10-12-2005, 05:36 AM

so is the controller on the motherboard or on the SATA drive?

This is the board I am getting

http://www.albatron.com.tw/english/i...asp?pro_id=196

How can I tell if this SATA controller is supported in Linux?

Thanks

vasudevadas · 10-12-2005, 09:58 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by shazam75
so is the controller on the motherboard or on the SATA drive?

This is the board I am getting

http://www.albatron.com.tw/english/i...asp?pro_id=196

How can I tell if this SATA controller is supported in Linux?

The controller is on the motherboard.

Your link shows (by looking at the drivers) that the SATA controller is a VIA VT8237(R). Googling (using www.google.com/linux) takes me to this page:

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html

which informs me that your chipset is supported in the "sata_via" driver, which has been included in the kernel since 2.6.3.

shazam75 · 10-12-2005, 06:08 PM

thank you very much vasudevadas!

Regards
Shelton.