Hi

I have a Dell Precision 650 workstation with built-in SCSI and IDE controllers. I had 36GB SCSI HDD but now bought a SATA controller installed in a PCI slot. I have Red hat Advanced Server 3 with kernel 2.4.21.51. The BIOS detects the controller and the hard-disk. The Kudzu also detected the controller and the /var/log/messages shows the following:

Jan 25 09:31:20 live kernel: ICH4: not 100%% native mode: will probe irqs later
Jan 25 09:31:20 live kernel: ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbio
Jan 25 09:31:20 live kernel: ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddio
Jan 25 09:31:20 live kernel: hda: MAXTOR STM3250310AS, ATA DISK drive
Jan 25 09:31:20 live kernel: blk: queue c05111c0, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
Jan 25 09:31:20 live kernel: hdc: SAMSUNG CD-ROM SC-148A, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
Jan 25 09:31:20 live kernel: ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
Jan 25 09:31:20 live kernel: ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
Jan 25 09:31:20 live kernel: hda: attached ide-disk driver.
Jan 25 09:31:20 live kernel: hda: host protected area => 1
Jan 25 09:31:20 live kernel: hda: 488397168 sectors (250059 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=30401/255/63, UDMA(33)
Jan 25 09:31:20 live kernel: ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
Jan 25 09:31:20 live kernel: Partition check:
Jan 25 09:31:20 live kernel: hda: unknown partition table
Jan 25 09:31:20 live kernel: ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide

when I do fdisk -l it displays the following:

Disk /dev/sda: 36.4 GB, 36420075008 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4427 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 14 1033 8193150 82 Linux swap
/dev/sda3 1034 1670 5116702+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 1671 4427 22145602+ f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 1671 4427 22145571 83 Linux

It doesn't show the newly installed drive. I tried to mount the /dev/hda and /dev/sda but no success. I am installing Maxtor 250GB SATA drive.

Any help or hint would be helpful.

RMA

The new drive is detected, but you apparently have not partitioned and formated the drive.

Even if the drive was not partitioned and formatted, it should still show up in fdisk -l.

I'm not sure that your kernel has sata support. IIRC most of the sata stuff, specifically libata, was backported to the 2.4 kernels in 2.4.27. Check to see if the libata module is loaded by running:

# /sbin/lsmod | grep libata

If not, try loading the module with:

# /sbin/modprobe libata

Along with libata you also need the specific driver module for the chipset used in your sata controller. For example, the one for intel sata controllers is ata_piix. If libata loads, you will have to determine the chipset of your sata controller by checking your lspci output and determine the correct sata module for it.

If you get a module not found error when modprobing libata, the kernel probably doesn't support your sata controller. In that case, you can see if there is a more recent kernel with better sata support available.

Looking at the OP again, I see several lines that indicate the Maxtor 250GB drive is detected. Fdisk -l should show it if the command is used without a device parameter (fdisk -l). However, if the command is given as 'fdisk -l /dev/sda', then hda won't be listed.

I saw that but I think it's just reading the hardware identifyers of the hardware bus; that doesn't mean the sata modules are loading. However, just to clarify, rashid, please post the entire output of:

# /sbin/fdisk -l