I just got a new machine that has SATA mobo (MSI K8N Dimnd+) and was thinking of switching my old HDDs to the newer SATA (like a WD Raptor 10kRPM).

Does the default 2.4.31 kernel that comes with Slack10.2 support this on an NVidia NForce 4 chipset mobo, right out of the box (or CD case, I should say)?

And I guess question #2: Will SATA drives run concurrently with old IDE drives, as if I just added an SATA to my existing IDE drive, although, I guess that's not really Linux-related...

n/m found my answers

Could you post your findings please. I'm building a new box and would like to use SATA drives.

Well, I haven't done anything yet, so I have no instructions to offer, but it looks like kernel 2.4.27 added support for SATA. I'm not sure on the exact version, but I know that 2.4.31 in Slack v10.2 has it.

Look in the 'bootdisks' directory of the 1st install disk. In 10.2 there is a kernel called 'bare-sata.i' or something similar with 'SATA' in it. This is also in the list at install time, when it asks you if you want to use a different kernel from the boot disk or CD, etc...

I actually was in the store last night, holding a nice 150G WD Raptor, but then I realized I never got my onboard ethernet & sound working yet, so I put my priorities in order and set to work on that first...

Actually bare.i supports SATA disks, but the support is provided by modules, so you can have secondary SATA disks with it. You'll need to use sata.i instead of bare.i if you want to boot from a SATA disk.