Second Hard Disk Not Reading

Syndacate · 2008-06-28 17:23:08

I have two SATA hard disks (mobo is an Abit iC7-G) which are controlled by a silicon image or an intel controller (this board has 4 sata connections and 2 of them are on one controller from one company, and the other 2 are from another controller from a different company *shrugs*).

Allow me to explain my disk setup first as far as internal storage goes:
SATA1 = sda = 200Gb (6Y200MO) = windows/ubuntu/swap
SATA2 = sdb = 120Gb (6Y120MO) = Arch/LFS (linux from scratch)/extended Part/swap/storage

I have the boot installer installed to the master boot record of sdb, I simply switch the boot order in the BIOS to choose which disk to boot - it boots, it fails to see sda, and it itself assumes sda, in my /dev/ I only have listed sda (the drive arch itself is on).

This is a really weird problem because I experienced the same thing from LFS on this drive, though when I had SUSE on this partition (before I put archlinux on it) it was able to read both hard drives no problem. I thought this was a kernel error in LFS, but now since the problem is repeating I'm not sure what the hell it is.

Anybody have some insight?

fukawi2 · 2008-06-29 09:03:05

I don't have a reason, but couldn't you just swap the SATA cables on the mobo to switch which one is which? You'll have to rewrite your GRUB config and fstab files, but after that it should be fine.

Using UUID's to mount the disks might help too:
http://linux.byexamples.com/archives/32 … with-uuid/

Syndacate · 2008-06-29 16:28:44

fukawi2 wrote:

I don't have a reason, but couldn't you just swap the SATA cables on the mobo to switch which one is which? You'll have to rewrite your GRUB config and fstab files, but after that it should be fine.
Using UUID's to mount the disks might help too:
http://linux.byexamples.com/archives/32 … with-uuid/

I'm not sure if it's the order - simply because other OS's (ie. Fedora and SuSE recognize it from the same location), but this and LFS both failed to :-\ - maybe it has to do with options enabled in a "lighter" kernel...

Either way, I'll try listing it by UUID, though it shouldn't matter, I'll give it a whirl.

Syndacate · 2008-06-29 17:03:51

I didn't think that would do anything but everything worked out fine, reads and mounts all my disks now.

Thanks for the suggestion, wouldn't have tried it as I thought it would just be location vs ID and either would work :-\.

fukawi2 · 2008-06-30 07:01:18

Glad that worked

So everything is working dandy now?

Syndacate · 2008-07-04 07:42:14

Yes, thank you.

Last edited by Syndacate (2008-07-04 07:42:21)

Factory · 2008-07-05 12:02:01

Glad to hear everything's ok. Mind changing the title of the post to have [SOLVED] in front of it?

Arch Linux

#1 2008-06-28 17:23:08

Second Hard Disk Not Reading

#2 2008-06-29 09:03:05

Re: Second Hard Disk Not Reading

#3 2008-06-29 16:28:44

Re: Second Hard Disk Not Reading

#4 2008-06-29 17:03:51

Re: Second Hard Disk Not Reading

#5 2008-06-30 07:01:18

Re: Second Hard Disk Not Reading

#6 2008-07-04 07:42:14

Re: Second Hard Disk Not Reading

#7 2008-07-05 12:02:01

Re: Second Hard Disk Not Reading

Board footer