Hi,
Thanks for the reply. But I have the ASUS P4PE and there is nothing in the BIOS that would allow me to set the drives to 'legacy mode'. In fact, as I only have SATA drive, the only IDE I can see is my CDrom, on the Primary IDE channel. Besides that one, there aren't any Hard disk drive in my machine. So, any other ideas?

Serial ATA is new. Give up now, and wait for 6 months till it's easy, or beat yourself
up and cuss about how linux sucks, trying everything you can find on the web.
Messing with new hardware in linux is tough, even for veterans.
Use windows 2000 until you're sick of all the worms screwing up your server.
Search for linux and serial ata howto's on google.

I'd just like to add that I have a Asus P4P800 that uses the Intel ICH5R south bridge (has built in SATA support) and I have a SATA Seagate 160GB (ST3160023AS) drive that works great with Mandrake 9.2.

I just installed Mandrake the other day and it picked up the harddrive during installation and works great. I didn't even know Linux "struggles" with SATA drives until I saw this topic. Seems Linux can handle SATA just fine (at least with my setup).

It is not that linux doesn't recognises my sata drive. The problem is that I have only sata drives and they are set up in a RAID 1 (mirrored) configuration. That is my problem. None of the distributions I tried could cope with that. But even Redhat and Fedora could not get the simple configuration form my controller card. It is very frustrating. I am still on Windows.... what a freak!

I'm confused . . .

I had thought there's a certain "RAID component software" that is suppose to come with SATA install, which I loaded with Windows.

Here's RAID defined:

http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/...m=RAID&x=0&y=0

And here's SATA defined:

http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/...term=SerialATA

I don't have a lot of time to try and sort things out, but

MarcNZ seems to suggest that RAID is a problem what exactly is poster SARKE doing differently I wonder?

We all wonder!!!!

NEVER MIND A CRAPPY LINUX OPERATING SYSTEM such AS Mandrake and in some cases REDHAT and some others

THAT DON'T KNOW THEIR ASSH*LES from a modern hard driveS. (Seagate SATA Barracuda 80 gig w/ Raid)

KNOPPIX LINUX LOADED EASILY
IT RUNS FROM A CD!!!!!

yeah but can it read your hard drive?

The problem is not SATA - its the hardware controller of your sata drive (which is a raid controller right...). Hardware support always takes longer in linux. Try really hard to find someone else with the exact same hardware that has, or is trying, to get it to run in linux.

Or maybe you could learn to program - and write the drivers yourself. Thats how a lot of the support gets into linux - someone who needs it will write it. Or someone who is talked to nicely will write it.

Point well taken,

Well that's the joy of this trade and hobby of computers and the thrill of the scavenger hunt.

I don't have a lot of motivation to learn something from people that inolves a lot of work on my part unless I really see something in it for me.

I just might take your advice someday and learn to write what I need myself and become more employable as a result. That's the hope of guts and glory.

Then again, the guts and glory of research and data mining through countless google searches helped too.

To each his own. Its all a learning process, isn't?

OPEN SOURCE UBER ALLES

SEIG KOPPNIX!!!!

Isn't that how Linux originally began? Linus Torvalds had a passion to make things work efficiently for his own joy and went about doing it with the only means available at the moment.

My means are a bit different, AT THE MOMENT.

to each his own
whatever floats one's boat

So is it the hard drive or the mother board at fault?


CONTROLLER DEFINED -

http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/...roller&x=0&y=0

The hard drive really has little to do with it. The controller needs to be supported as that is what Linux "talks" to. Whatever happens between the controller and the drive is up to the drive and controller manufacturers, and isn't actually controlled by the operating system.


Håkan

For the love of GOD isn't there at least 1 highly comprehensive and useful distribution

that just puts that kernel version into it

that will just understand the controller a bit better

the VERY first time the CD is put in the drive?

not several months later. . . or several scavenging hunts later. . . .

As LUCK would have it, I was fortunate enough to attend a linux install fest.

The Main board I have seems to not like anything less than the 2.6.x+ kernel.

http://www.mwvlug.org/modules.php?na...wtopic&p=12#12

Gentoo seems to be the best right now for such an install.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

BY THE WAY

THE "CULPRIT CONTROLLER" you all might be interested in IS "VT8237 CHIPSET"

any thoughts or suggestions

AHhhh. . hum VT8237 chipset

Here's even more INFO ON THAT chipset


http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=297