I have booted into clonezilla or gparted to see if that picks up the drives. These two utilities detect almost any drives hooked up to the system, be it pci, usb, scsi etc. At least that would confirm that the motherboard and pci sata adapter are actually working correctly. Walt -----Original Message----- From: staffslug-bounces(a)staffslug.org.uk [mailto:staffslug-bounces@staffslug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Kevanf1 Sent: 03 June 2012 15:25 To: Staffslug Mailing List Subject: [Staffslug] Installing onto a SATA drive? I have an oldish Gigabyte board that has a small SATA connector board (PCI) attached to it. I've popped a Mint disk (11 I think which I know is old now) in just to try and install to the 500gb SATA drive that is hooked up. Nothing. No sign of the SATA drive anywhere. Should I be doing anything different? I know that with MS Windows I need to halt the install near the beginning and add the relevant drivers but I didn't expect to have to do this with Linux. Or do I? Any ideas? I don't want to but ultimately I may end up having to buy :( a new mobo with fully built in SATA capability. This would also entail buying new RAM, new optical drives..... you see why I don't want to do this. -- ============================================== Kevan Linux user #373362 Staffordshire ********************************************** www.freeworld-recycling.org 'Just Free it.' ********************************************** _______________________________________________ Staffslug mailing list Staffslug(a)staffslug.org.uk http://server.bytestream.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/staffslug

On 03/06/12 15:25, Kevanf1 wrote: If the SATA connector has a BIOS menu of its own, then make sure that it's not trying to do some form of RAID craziness. In many fakeRAID "controllers", Linux will still detect the disks through the controller and ignore any form of "RAID" metadata, but still, we have no idea what this controller is or how it's setup -- most do have a BIOS with settings to be checked, however. Mint 12 is out now; try that -- or Ubuntu 12.04 -- both will have newer kernels and thus, the possibility of 'better' hardware support. :) If nothing else, an Adaptec 1210SA SATA card from Ebay will cost a few quid and will likely be supported. If you've got a faulty one or one of the few that just doesn't work right, then large expenditure isn't the only way out. Tom

Another thought on this. While browsing the various SATA daughter cards I have found some cards that simply plug into a standard IDE or PATA slot but then enable a SATA drive to be plugged into the card. Apparently this enables the motherboard (BIOS) to see the drive as if it is a normal (read old fashioned) PATA drive. So, the question is, are they any good? They are similar to the cards that plug into an IDE socket and enable a Compact Flash card to be slotted in and used as a bootable device. Did I mention the fact that they are temptingly cheap.... :) -- ============================================== Kevan Linux user #373362 Staffordshire ********************************************** www.freeworld-recycling.org 'Just Free it.' **********************************************

On 5 June 2012 21:18, Tom Hill <tom(a)ninjabadger.net&gt; wrote: Well, the converters are only about 99p so it's not exactly a lot if it doesn't work... If it doesn't I can easily try a PCI card. Bearing in mind it is an old mobo anyway so I wonder if the bandwidth would be much different.... At some point I shall get a newer, more modern board but I just want to eke out some more use from this one. I could put it into use as some form of server but I already have about half a dozen for this sort of use :) -- ============================================== Kevan Linux user #373362 Staffordshire ********************************************** www.freeworld-recycling.org 'Just Free it.' **********************************************