generic HW question about SATA

[Kevin J. Cummings]

Anne Wilson wrote:
> Are there any issues as to where the OS is, on such a mixed-drive setup?  I 
> ask because windwave seems to want something that I have been considering - 
> adding a SATA drive to an existing PATA installation.

Yes.  Most SATA support is through a SATA device driver which either
needs to be built directly into your kernel, or a module pre-loaded
through your initrd image.  I recently added 2 SATA drives to my already
running PATA system.  Since I was still booting with my hda drive as my
boot drive, I didn't have to change anything.  I just made sure that the
sata_nv driver was included in my initrd, and when I booted, linux found
my SATA drives.  I have since moved my root partition from /dev/hda2 to
/dev/sdb2.  Now, I still boot from /dev/hda, and I have told grub that
my root is on the new disk drive (hd2, 1).

I have not yet solved the magic incantation to get my BIOS to boot from
the SATA drive first.  I also don't know what my disk map will look like
when I do.  I had enough trouble moving my root partition and getting
grub to do the correct thing from my rescue disk before that I put off
doing the final step (and possible removing the last PATA disk from my
system).

> Anne

YMMV, but hopefully, not much.

-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at rcn.com
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)