Hard Drive Not Being Detected

Xyal · 03-31-2007, 02:17 PM

I have an ASUS M2N32-SLI motherboard which utilizes nvidias nForce 590 chipset. Whilst trying to install slackware 11.0, I'm unable to detect my hard drive and the only partition shown when I use cfdisk, is a 4.7gb one (the dvd im booting from).

The hard drive is a Seagate SATAII 200gb (ST3200820AS).

I've tried using sata.i and the 2.6 testing kernel but have been unable to get slackware to detect the drive. Its showing up fine in the bios under SATA1.

This drive is partitioned 3 times, NTFS (Windows XP), ext3 and a swap partition.

Any suggestions/fixes would be appreciated.

Regards,
--
Xyal.

Brian1 · 03-31-2007, 02:26 PM

See if the bios has the option to change the Sata mode to say IDE Legacy or Pata mode. Save and exit. Try to install.

Brian

Xyal · 03-31-2007, 02:28 PM

Bios only has the options for RAID or SATA mode. thats all I get :S

Brian1 · 03-31-2007, 02:38 PM

Not sure if your sata controller is supported but my only other thought is install to an IDE drive. If you wish for it to be on the sata then after the IDE install is complete then you can use partimage from a bootable live cd tool disk and copy the partitions from the IDE to Sata but that can depend on whether the Live CD can see the sata controller.

What you may want to do is get the latest Knoppix Live CD and see if it can see the sata drive after booted.

Brian

Xyal · 03-31-2007, 02:46 PM

Looking through the boot log again. I notice it shows my hard drive model number after nv_scsi5 or something. Running the probe command also shows:

/dev/sda1 = my windows partition
/dev/sda2 = my linux partition
/dev/sda3 = my swap... i have no idea whats going on here. The drive is definitely not SCSI

The SATA controller on the motherboard is:
Silicon Image 3132

Regards,
--
Xyal

Brian1 · 03-31-2007, 03:57 PM

Sata uses the generic portion of scsi. It saves developers from writing a whole new piece of software to the kerenl where the work is already done and easy to interact with. USB and Firewire drives use generic scsi and seen as /dev/sd** devices. A few others use it as well.

My guess Slack does not fully use the needed module for the controller. No idea of how to force slackware to use the needed module to install or create an additional boot disc with correct kernel version of the controller module.

Brian

jeenam · 03-31-2007, 05:34 PM

As Brian1 mentioned, SATA drives are detected as /dev/sdX devices in the latest 2.6.x kernels. This change has been around since 2.6.9 or so. Welcome to the world of newer kernels.

Your system has no problems, it's just a matter of becoming familiar with the new SATA implementation in the 2.6.x series.