[wellylug] New HDD on old motherboard

[Geraint Jones]

You could always get a cheap promise IDE raid card and use that, can get
such things on trademe for < $100

Geraint Jones
Systems Administrator
French Maid Foods Limited
www.french-maid.net
 
Tel:  +64 (0)4 568 2687
Fax:  +64 (0)4 568 2345
Mob: +64 (0)21 739 240

-----Original Message-----
From: wellylug-admin at lists.wellylug.org.nz
[mailto:wellylug-admin at lists.wellylug.org.nz] On Behalf Of Brent Wood
Sent: Monday, 6 December 2004 10:22 a.m.
To: wellylug at lists.wellylug.org.nz
Subject: Re: [wellylug] New HDD on old motherboard


> 
> If Linux is on another disk in the system, try telling the BIOS
nothing
> about the drive. You might need to ensure it's the only drive on
whatever
> IDE chain you put it on, but Linux should find it anyway.
> 
> Common trick. I had to do it a lot for my first 200G spindles, before
I
> upgraded a motherboard to one that supported LBA48.


But you can't boot off a such a disk, and I've often found that without
BIOS
support for the drive, (to enable the motherboard to correctly identify
& set
up the disk/ide controller), Linux can sometimes "see" it & use it, but
it can
seldom set up UDMA & SMART diagnostics etc, correctly. 

The goal was to get DMA enabled under Linux & this is often problematic
unless
the BIOS works nicely with the drive.

Personally, I've found the hours it can take to resolve such things
generally
worth far more than the $200 odd for a brand new motherboard/cpu to
avoid the
problem in the first place, & you get a much faster & generally more
reliable
system anyway. eg: GA-7VM400M-RZ with a Sempron 2200, not blindingly
fast by
modern standards, but a very cost effective upgrade. Comparable packages
with
other boards are pretty easy to find... or even things like used Duron
1200
cpu/boards for < $100 via Trade Me, etc...

In my case, at least, it is long past trying to make components work
together
being "fun" or even a challenging or interesting learning experience :-(
If
hardware doesn't wanna work together, find something that does.

If you finally get everything working, you'll decide to upgrade anyway
:-)

A bit like trying to get WinXP working reliably. Upgrading to Linux is
much
easier :-) 

Or am I just having an end of year bout of the can't be bothered's ? 


Cheers

   Brent


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