Hello Linux experts.

I am having a hard time getting a SATA drive to work. It's a Maxtor 300 GB internal HD installed in a Vantec NexStar 3 external SATA/USB drive enclosure. It has both USB and SATA ports. Everything works fine with the USB connection, it's just SATA that's not working. When I connect with USB and do "fdisk -l" it shows the drive and I can mount it. But when I try to use SATA, nothing shows up.

The drive is formatted with one ext3 partition.

Here's my setup:

Gateway workstation
CentOS 4.4 (a clone of RedHat Enterprise)
Kernel 2.6.9-42.0.3.ELsmp
Rosewill SATA PCI card, model RC-205, using a Silicon Image Sil 3512 SATA controller

The system hardware browser utility lists these SATA controllers:

Hardware browser > system devices lists Silicon Image “Sil 3512”
Hardware browser > IDE controllers lists “82801EB (ICH5) SATA controller”

I'm not sure why it lists two.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

When using the sata port is the machine off and then you boot up or are you trying to hotswap mount the drive?

Brian

I'm attaching the drive with the machine powered down.

Thanks,

E

Been thinking about it but no idea at the moment.

Brian

Thanks for considering the problem. I've been using RedHat for years and I've become accustomed to hardware Just Working. When I bought the SATA drive it never occurred to me that maybe Linux isn't ready for it yet.

I did some research and found this site. Dug around some more and decided to try ordering this Addonics host controller that uses the Silicon Image 3124 chip.

We'll see how it goes.

Thanks,

E

I currently have the Sil 3112 chip set on a pcmcia card. I've had some problems using it in certain PCMCIA card slots so I am looking for a different card that might work better in a variety of laptops. I see that Sil 3124 is listed a lot of places as well as Sil 3512. I also see Sil 3215 but I am pretty sure thats a typo and not a real chip set for pcmcia SATA cards. Anyone have an opinion about any of the chip sets that they would like to recommend. I looked for some comparisons on Silicon's website but didn't find much help there.

p.s. the incompatibility seems to be an issue in Windows too. I think it is just trying to take over some addressing that is meant for the "high quality" on board video that laptops are known for having.

Any help would be appreciated

thanks

This thread is really old. Maybe no one will see your question. I would start a new thread with that question. (I don't know the answer.)

you may have fixed this fault but try putting in the jumper to limit the drive to 150