# S-ATA problem with Promise RAID controller

## pjesi

Finally everything is working on my Gentoo except my S-ATA disk (NTFS with WinXP installed)

Motherboard: ASUS P4C800 deluxe and has 4 S-ATA slots. 2 from south bridge (ICH5) and 2 from Promise PDC20378 controller.

Kernel: 2.6.5 gentoo-dev-sources

I configured the menuconfig to support the promise controller and sata. and it does not matter if I connect the disk to south brigde or the raid controller, It never shows up in ls /dev/hd*

Any suggestions?

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## pjesi

SCSI low-level drivers  --->

[*] Serial ATA (SATA) support

<*>   Promise SATA support 

<*>   Intel PIIX/ICH SATA support

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## pjesi

dmesg | grep ata

Memory: 902900k/917504k available (2943k kernel code, 13860k reserved, 1095k data, 400k init, 0k highmem)

libata version 1.02 loaded.

ata_piix version 1.01

ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xEFE0 ctl 0xEFAE bmdma 0xEF60 irq 18

ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xEFA0 ctl 0xEFAA bmdma 0xEF68 irq 18

ata1: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:346b 83:7f01 84:4003 85:3c69 86:3c01 87:4003 88:20ff

ata1: dev 0 ATA, max UDMA7, 312581808 sectors (lba48)

ata1: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133

scsi0 : ata_piix

ata2: SATA port has no device. disabling.

ata2: thread exiting

scsi1 : ata_piix

sata_promise version 0.91

ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xF8853200 ctl 0xF8853238 bmdma 0x0 irq 23

ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xF8853280 ctl 0xF88532B8 bmdma 0x0 irq 23

ata3: no device found (phy stat 00000000)

ata3: thread exiting

scsi2 : sata_promise

ata4: no device found (phy stat 00000000)

ata4: thread exiting

scsi3 : sata_promise

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## pjesi

that was with the hdd connected to south bridge, with hdd connected to promise it looks like this:

sata_promise version 0.91

ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xF8853200 ctl 0xF8853238 bmdma 0x0 irq 23

ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xF8853280 ctl 0xF88532B8 bmdma 0x0 irq 23

ata1: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:346b 83:7f01 84:4003 85:3c69 86:3c01 87:4003 88:80ff

ata1: dev 0 ATA, max UDMA7, 312581808 sectors (lba48)

ata1: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133

scsi0 : sata_promise

ata2: no device found (phy stat 00000000)

ata2: thread exiting

scsi1 : sata_promise

  Vendor: ATA       Model: SAMSUNG SP1614C   Rev: 1.02

  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05

sorry about this not being in a "code" I'm just not familiar to forums posting.

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## pjesi

I managed to solve this with unplugging the cdrom drive and configure the BIOS to run IDE in comptability mode. That leaves me without CD drive but it's better than not being able to use the S-ATA disk  :Smile: 

I have search other forums that deal with similar probelm (they are trying to install gentoo on that sata drive) and there seems to be no possibility to use both IDE slots and S-ATA slot.

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## gcasillo

I will once again dispell the myth. With a 2.6 kernel and an Intel chipset (e.g. ICH5), you DO NOT need to enable SCSI support. And you can use your SATA drives in native mode (SATA not PATA). Provided you don't have any other devices that require SCSI support, completely disable SCSI support in your kernel. No low level drivers. Nothing.

That's it. Your drives will show up as /dev/hde, /dev/hdg, etc. so make sure to adjust your /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/grub.conf files accordingly before booting that new kernel.

Now you can use hdparm on your SATA (read: not SCSI) drive(s). Just a pet peeve of mine that SCSI support for non-SCSI drives. Sorry.

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## pjesi

yes I did that but then again I can only connect 2 devices so I had to disconnect my cdrw drice

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