My MEPIS (7) has not detected my brand-new SATA HD. Are there any particular settings I should check? It hasn't had a problem detecting any IDE devices.

I should mention that my BIOS has SATA, RAID and ACHI (whatever that is) modes. It's currently in SATA mode.

Most likely not a mepis problem. A lot of new hdds are sata2. A lot of mobos except the recent ones are plain old sata or sata1. Most sata2 drives have a jumper pin to make them compatible with the sata1 mobos.

That could be, but I don't think so, because my motherboard, which is about six months old, has "SATA II" printed below the six SATA ports.

newbiesforever,

I am afraid Mepis 7 has a problem with mixed IDE and SATA drives as you will see from the following two links.

http://mepislovers.org/forums/showth...DE+SATA+drives

http://www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.p...nd_SATA_Drives

This problem has been resolved with Mepis 8 beta (currently 7.9.92-beta5).
A new final version of Mepis 8 is expected in the next 3 or 4 weeks. The M8 beta works perfectly (I have been using it for ages) and you can upgrade to the new version without a fresh install if you wish.
I strongly recommend using the M8 beta (or Mepis 8 final) instead of Mepis 7.

http://www.mepiscommunity.org/

Go to the Mepis download mirror sites: http://www.mepis.org/mirrors
and select your nearest mirror site.

Then select “Testing” followed by a download and burn to CD of:

SimplyMEPIS-CD_7.9.92-beta5_32.iso

Great, I'll try it. But I am skeptical of it being a MEPIS-specific problem, because I tried my SATA drive in Knoppix, OpenSuse, and Mint. None of them detected it, either.

There was no mention of other OSs having the same problem, so I naturally assumed that it was specifically a Mepis problem.
Your problem may be related to AHCI.

Go into your BIOS.
Select Integrated Peripherals then OnChip SATA Device.
What is the mode?
If it is IDE, try setting it to AHCI mode.
No guarantees, just a suggestion.