hi guys,

this table:

Primary master PATA hard disk had
Primary slave PATA hard disk hdb
Secondary master PATA hard disk hdc
Secondary slave PATA hard disk hdd

Table 2-3 PATA hard disk configurations

should had actually be hda???

just wanted to make sure

yes that is usually hda

And these days, they will show as /dev/sda,/dev/sdb,/dev/sdc,/dev/sdd - this change of name is due to the driver Linux now uses.

thanks syg00...

A thing to be aware of / remember is that dependent on the onboard hdd controller or installed hdd controller card, it is possible that the drive assignments can change post reboot. i.e. on a reboot Primary master PATA could be assigned /dev/sdc - On the the next reboot it could be /dev/sdd So via /etc/fstab it's not recommended to mount a drive at a particular location using the device name but to use the UUID

For example to mount the primary pata drive at location /media/data1 (via /etc/fstab), rather than

/dev/sda /media/data1 ext4 defaults,noatime 0 0

you would use

"disk_drive_uuid " /media/data1 ext4 defaults,noatime 0 0

The above would force the drive to be mounted at the fixed location. The UUID of the drive can be obtained using the blkid command

Hope this helps & good luck.

Regards,

Rawcous

Interestingly, this was not the case for /dev/hdx devices in the pre-libata days. /dev/hda was always the master on the primary channel, /dev/hdb was always the slave on the primary channel and so on. If you connected a drive to the secondary PATA/EIDE channel and jumpered it as "slave", it became /dev/hdd even if you had no other drives.

yes looks like a simple autocorrect error. the primary master in a PATA (IDE) system would typically be /dev/hda as you mention.