Debian on Sata drive
 

Hi,

I tried installing Debian 3.0 r3 on a Gateway PC with a 250 SATA drive. During the hard drive partitioning, it reports only 137M instead of 250M. Anybody has an idea? Or is SATA supported in debian 3.0 r3?

Does your BIOS support 48 bit LBA addressing? You will need that, as well as an OS that supports the same. BIOS support may/may_not be there if you're using BIOS from 4-5 years ago. Recent BIOS should not be a problem. Older BIOS may be flashable to add 48 bit support.

Boot with a recent version of Knoppix, su to root, then run "fdisk -l" and see what size disk is reported. If it's your BIOS limiting you then Knoppix will only see a 137Gb disk. If Knoppix can see the entire disk then your BIOS is OK and it's Debian 3.0 that's limiting you. I've never used Debian 3.0 so I don't know what it does/does_not support. Why would you want to install this older version of Debian anyway?

Knoppix can see the 250G. Then, I guessed I just have to use the latest version of debian.

Thanks for the reply.

Make sure you're using a 2.6 kernel. The 2.4's gave me trouble w/ sata. (the newest Debian will do that for you)

This will depend on your specific SATA implementation (integrated onto mobo? seperate controller card? chipset?)

I found that Debian Sarge with the 2.4.something kernel COULD see my SATA. But Debian Sarge with the 2.6.8 kernel could NOT. Then I was able to see my SATA again after putting in the 2.6.12 kernel.

This is a known issue with my chipset, nForce3 250Gb, and the 2.6 kernel. 2.4 could see this SATA combo through some kind of "compatibility mode" or something like that. Then along came 2.6 with supposed native support and it broke things. The problem was finally fixed in the 2.6.11 kernel.

On the other hand, Sarge with the 2.6.8 kernel recognized my SATA at work just fine. But that's a different chipset (Pentium4 system at work vs. Athlon64 at home).

Generally, the newer the kernel the better support for various SATA (I would expect). Of course my personal experience was just the opposite, but that was specific to the nForce3 (and nForce4???) chipsets.