[luau] ultra ata 100 okay?

[Eric Hattemer]

I bought a WD 250GB (230Gib) drive last week and it works fine in RH9. 
 It comes with a promise card.  Windows cannot read the drive on the 
nvidia controller, so I had to use the promise card.  The only issue is 
unless your bios is pretty hardcore, it will boot as hde or higher.  I 
don't remember why, but my lilo is on my onboard controller hda.  I 
think it was just easier that way.  I know the installer told me my 
system wouldn't boot, I ignored it, then I had to repair it :).  So the 
lilo part might be tricky.  Windows is twice as bitchy, though.  I now 
realize the steps I need to take to get windows onto hde, but it 
shouldn't be as hard as it will be.  As for hdparm, you want to make 
sure you have it installed, then edit /etc/sysconfig/harddisks.  Set 
USE_DMA=1 and at the bottom where it says extra_parms or something, set 
"-X 69".  I like to set "-S 0 -M254", but that's just me.  USE_DMA is 
necessary if you don't want HD reads to lock up the whole computer.  -X 
69 sets the drive to udma5 instead of dma33.  -S 0 keeps it from going 
to sleep, and -M 254 means to run as fast and loudly as possible (which 
may shorten the life of the drive, so beware).  And make sure you put 
the extra_parms line in quotes (ie. EXTRA_PARMS="-X 69 -S 0").  But like 
I said, with other controlers and drives on that computer, lilo may be 
hard, and grub may be impossible.  Windows may involve disabling the 
other dma channels (or unplugging the other HD's) during instalation, 
then getting lilo to boot the WD drive, then installing windows with the 
F6 driver disk.


-Eric Hattemer

tom_gordon at notes.k12.hi.us wrote:

>knowing the make & model of your current controller will be plenty enough 
>to answer that question.  that can be found out by knowing the make & 
>model of the motherboard, if it is integrated.  and that can be found out 
>by writing down the numbers on the boot init /mem test screen and googling 
>it.
>
>you also won't be getting the same kind of performance as you would in 
>windows becuase RH9 uses concervative settings (compared to windows) so 
>tweaking hdparms in single-user mode is a must.  google is your friend 
>there too.
>
>i hope this helps
>
>tom
>
>
>
>Please respond to luau at videl.ics.hawaii.edu
>Sent by:        luau-admin at videl.ics.hawaii.edu
>To:     luau <luau at videl.ics.hawaii.edu>
>cc: 
>Subject:        [luau] ultra ata 100 okay?
>
>I'm trying to figure out if this western digital 175GB
>7200rpm ultra ata/100 hard drive will work in my linux
>system.
>
>I went to redhat and looked for their HCLs, since I am
>running RH9, but I don't find anything about western
>digital when I search. This is a bit suspicious that
>none of their drives would be listed.
>
>Anyhow, it has a special pci controller card & warns
>all the windows people to load the drivers.
>
>What should I do to find out?
>TDB
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