jim beard

The new system is a Gateway DX4300-09. It came with a 3609 GB SATA hard
drive installed. A tech a MicroCenter transferred the two 250 GB WDC2500J
drives from my old system to the new.

Currently, partprobe thinks the old machine's sdb drive is now hdb,
the new drive (Vista on it) is listed as sda, and the old machine's
sda is listed as sdb.

[root@jb sbin]# partprobe -s
/dev/hdb: msdos partitions 1 2 <5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12>
/dev/sda: msdos partitions 1 2
/dev/sdb: msdos partitions 1 2 <5 8 11 6 7 9 10>

I am playing music stored on the new /dev/hdb9 at the moment, so
access is possible. The labels on the partitions on hdb were not
recognized at boot, though, and I consider it strange that two disks
of the same model should be given different designations.

Did the tech misconnect one?
Does it matter?
Should I go into the BIOS again and see if I can change something
to align things properly?

I have not yet worked up the courage to reboot since getting 2008.1
running, and am inclined to minimize changes in BIOS until I have more
confidence that other things are working, but any suggestions offered
will likely be implemented late this evening or tomorrow.

Cheers!

im b.
--
UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.

jim beard

Progress report on new Gateway DX4300-09.

The problem with one SATA drive appearing as hdb has been solved. There
were six positions a drive cable could be plugged into. The top two
resulted in labels hda and hdb, and SATA drives plugged into the others
are labeled as sda, sdb, sdc. The CD/DVD drive is also plugged into one
of these, but that is working regardless of what it is called.

Problems remain to be resolved. Boot has failed because suitable drivers
for vbox could not be found. I eliminated *vboxdrv* from the rc.d
subdirectories, and got past that. Then a boot failure apparently on
cron, resolved by going to interactive startup of services and omitting
it. I later started it via mcc, and the machine did not crash, so maybe
it is ok. The last boot resulted in dkms building drivers for vbox, so
maybe that will work.

The nvidia packages for the graphics card, x-11, etc had to be removed to
keep the system from reinstalling drivers for a card that no longer
exists on the system.

About time for another experiment.

im b.
--

Experiments are expected to fail. If one succeeds, either you
were too conservative in planning the experiment, or you now
may know enough to quit experimenting and try to do something
useful.

peter d.

on Sun, 1 Nov 2009 01:32 pm
in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva

That is just *wrong*.

The PATA drives should be hd[ab...] and the SATA drives sd[abcdef].

Unfortunately names are allocated as drives are found, so plugging
in an extra drive might, or might not, result in some, or all, of
the existing drives being renamed.

Try to plug new drives in positions after current drives.

--
Peter D.
Sig goes here...

jim beard

All three drives are SATA. The six positions the drive cables
can be plugged into appear identical to the eye, arranged in
two columns three high. The lowest right position is where the
CD/DVD burner is plugged in, and I have left that as is.

As best I know/remember it:

Currently, the top position in each column is empty. With the
new computer's drive in the center-left position and the old
WDC drives in center-right and lowest-left positions, all three
are recognized as sda drives (sdb center-left, sda center-right,
and sdc lowest-left). If I swap the center-left and
center-right connections, the WDC on the left will be seen as
hda and the new computer's drive on the right as sdb.

When I first got the computer back from the shop, one of the WDC
drives was plugged into one of the top two locations, and that
one was recognized as hdb, with the new computer's drive and the
other old WDC drive both recognized as sd drives (sda and sdc
respectively).

A bit squirrely, eh?

Cheers!

jim b.

--
UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.

peter d.

on Mon, 2 Nov 2009 11:46 am
in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva

The physical placement of the sockets does not necessarily mean
anything. If you plug in an extra drive, don't be shocked if
your existing drives change name.

--
Peter D.
Sig goes here...

jim beard

Physical place of the socket must mean something, or designationa
of a drive would not change from sd* to hd* and that was the
change that bothered me. I recognize that the numerical part of
the drive may change.

Hence, my earlier question. Is there any significance in the
designation of hd* or sd*? When two SATA drives of exactly the
same model are installed, I would (did) expect them both to be
hd* or both be sd* but depending on where the things are plugged
in one may be hd* and the other sd*. Both did work, though, even
when the appearing as hdb and sda drives. Strange.

Cheers!

jim b.


--
UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.

robert riches

An earlier posting indicated PATA drives would show up with one
first letter, while SATA drives would show up with a different
first letter. I wonder whether the controller might (perhaps
only internally) be a combination PATA/SATA controller, and some
of the SATA ports might be PATA ports run through a converter.

It might be good to post again which release you are using.

I just converted my 2009.0 system from PATA to SATA (without
reinstalling). During the switchover, when I had both types of
drives visible, all were /dev/sd{a,b,c,d}.

--
Robert Riches
spamtrap42@verizon.net
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)

peter d.

on Tue, 3 Nov 2009 02:23 pm
in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva

On any particular motherboard there will be a first socket,
second socket, etc. But don't expect it to be obvious which
one is which.

The drives plugged into the PATA ports are hd* and the drives
plugged into the SATA ports are sd*. Your motherboard/BIOS
is crazy.

The letter part of the name changes as you swap ports.
e.g. sdc1 and sdc3 might become sdd1 and sdd3 when you plug
in an extra drive.

--
Peter D.
Sig goes here...

eric

I ran into this on a server, in ide compatible mode the sata drive showed up
as hdb, switching to AHCI mode made the drive show up as sda
Go figuire - must be bios
Eric