Setting up a new SATA drive on an already working Debian install.

indienick · 11-29-2007, 12:26 PM

I just bought a new 500GB SATA hard drive (for a deal) and realized, when it arrived in the mail, that I didn't have a SATA plug on my motherboard. I don't know my motherboard make & model off-hand, but when I get home from work, I can post it.

I bought a PCI SATA card, and plugged it into a spare slot on my mobo, and Debian didn't recognize it. It just noticed I had unplugged my CD-RW drive.

Should HAL/udev automatically pick up my new PCI SATA card, or do I have to do something special?

HappyTux · 11-29-2007, 12:53 PM

You will want to look in the output of your dmesg command and see if it shows any mention of the card like below.

Code:

ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.2[B] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
ahci 0000:00:1f.2: AHCI 0001.0100 32 slots 4 ports 3 Gbps 0x33 impl SATA mode
ahci 0000:00:1f.2: flags: 64bit ncq sntf stag pm led clo pio slum part
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1f.2 to 64
scsi0 : ahci
scsi1 : ahci
scsi2 : ahci
scsi3 : ahci
scsi4 : ahci
scsi5 : ahci
ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xffffc20000014100 ctl 0x0000000000000000 bmdma 0x0000000000000000 irq 19
ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xffffc20000014180 ctl 0x0000000000000000 bmdma 0x0000000000000000 irq 19
ata3: DUMMY
ata4: DUMMY
ata5: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xffffc20000014300 ctl 0x0000000000000000 bmdma 0x0000000000000000 irq 19
ata6: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xffffc20000014380 ctl 0x0000000000000000 bmdma 0x0000000000000000 irq 19
ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
ata1.00: ATA-7: ST3500630AS, 3.AAE, max UDMA/133
ata1.00: 976773168 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32)
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
ata2.00: ATAPI: PIONEER DVD-RW  DVR-212D, 1.22, max UDMA/66
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/66
ata5: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
ata6: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)

Now if you see output similar to the above then it was detected. If you have not partitioned your new drive yet then nothing would be able to see/use the drive anyways as you need to make the partition(s) you want on it then you would format the partition(s) to put a file system on it/them and mount it/them to be able to put files on it/them. So what steps have you taken in this procedure that leads you to believe your drive and the card it is attached to is not recognized?

Edit: I should also mention that hal/udev does not have a lot to do with this once you have made/formated the partition(s) then you would need to add an entry/entries to your /etc/fstab for you to be able to have use of it/them on boot without needing to mount every time.

indienick · 11-29-2007, 01:00 PM

Okay - I will definitely report accordingly once I get home.

One quick question for when I try this (as I have not paritioned the drive yet), when I go to partition it with say, fdisk, which device do I pass (/dev/hd*)? Would it show up in Gparted?

HappyTux · 11-29-2007, 02:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by indienick

Okay - I will definitely report accordingly once I get home.

One quick question for when I try this (as I have not paritioned the drive yet), when I go to partition it with say, fdisk, which device do I pass (/dev/hd*)? Would it show up in Gparted?

It should just tell you in the output just below the controller what the drive was detected as like below.

Code:

scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      ST3500630AS      3.AA PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 976773168 512-byte hardware sectors (500108 MB)
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 976773168 512-byte hardware sectors (500108 MB)
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
 sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 < sda5 sda6 sda7 >

You would not see the last line I have as the drive would not have any partitions on it yet. Also if you were thinking of fdisk then you may as well use cfdisk (much easier to use and already installed in Debian) with something like cfdisk /dev/sda then create your partition(s) once done creating the partition(s) make sure to reboot the machine to ensure that the partition(s) are properly detected then format and mount putting whatever line(s) may be necessary in the /etc/fstab so it always available to you. It should been seen by the gparted just like it would be with fdisk or cfdisk just follow the same steps, partition, reboot .. etc.

syg00 · 11-29-2007, 02:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by indienick

I bought a PCI SATA card, and plugged it into a spare slot on my mobo, and Debian didn't recognize it. It just noticed I had unplugged my CD-RW drive.

Did you actually remove the CD-RW drive, or is this a conflict ???.
Haven't used a PCI S-ATA card in a while, but when I did, it was "slot sensitive". Maybe try moving it to a different slot.

indienick · 11-29-2007, 06:27 PM

Beautiful! The drive IS seen - it's being registered on my computer as /dev/sda. I didn't think it to originally be that because I usually have at least three devices plugged into USB (thus there always being sda, sdb and sdc).

But no, I can definitely see the 500GB drive on /dev/sda. This is wonderful. It's partitioned and working wonderfully.

Thank you for all your help.

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

Did you actually remove the CD-RW drive, or is this a conflict ???.
Haven't used a PCI S-ATA card in a while, but when I did, it was "slot sensitive". Maybe try moving it to a different slot.

Sorry, I wasn't quite clear. I unplugged the power cable to my CD-RW drive as I needed it to power my new SATA HD.