I am trying to add an Esata drive to my system. On my production system (Dell Powerdge 850 running only OpenFiler NAS software, 2 internal drives, PC Express 2 port esata card Fantom 1TB USB and Esata external drive), I can see the drive (as /dev/sdc). It has 1 small partition, rest is free.

I moved it to my beta system (bascially same as above but with a LaCie esata PCI card (which I think is the problem). It appears to be okay, but then vanishes. I finally tracked it down to :
ata3.00: HPA detected etc...
ata 3.00: ATA-0 WDC... etc (looks right)
ata 3.00: drive stuff then LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32) THIS IS THE PROBLEM I THINK
ata3.00: error this driver doesn't support LBA48 yet and may cause data corruption on such devices. Disabling
ata3.00: disabled.

So I know why I can't see the drive but have no idea what LBA48 is. Any help?

I am new to Linux and this stuff, but old to computers, I have a Computer Science degree from 1978 (so it is etched in stone). I think all the people who contribute to these forums are great. In 3 days I've done from never having touched Linux to running NAS Servers streaming video... mostly with help from places like this. But I'm stuck on this one LaCie is no help, and it may simply be the card isn't compatible, but I want to learn about drivers and how you get them since Linux (rpath, which comes with OpenFiler) seems to include and recognize everything.

I know know why the software guys that have worked for me for the past 10 years or so have been such linux/opensource fans.

Thanks

Joe

Hi dollface,

For LBA 48, see:
http://www.48bitlba.com/

If you're using OpenFiler NAS, I thing your question on that forum will be more likely to find someone who knows something about the problem.

As a guess, I'd say you are right about where the problem lies. What I don't know is: whether this is a firmware problem with your LaCie esata PCI card, or a problem with the OpenFiler NAS.

See also:
http://linux-ata.org/faq.html
-- for some more background info.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

SilverBear

Thanks, I did actually post it there as well, but I think they will think of it as a hardware/linux question. But we'll see.
Thanks for the suggestion about where to look I'll check it out in the morning (I remember now why I didn't get much sleep when I was a programmer).

Joe