Puppy 4 does not recognize SATA 3 Gb/s hard drive - SOLVED

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Dave54
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue 06 May 2008, 15:38

Puppy 4 does not recognize SATA 3 Gb/s hard drive - SOLVED

#1 Post by Dave54 »

I am running Puppy 4.00 from my USB flash drive, however this problem is exactly the same when I boot from the CD.

Booting from the CD, I can enter "puppy loglevel=7" and I can see where it hangs. I wrote down what I could:

Code: Select all

ata2: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
ata2.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata2.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x104)
ata2: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
ata2.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata2.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x104)
ata2.00: limiting speed to UDMA7:PI05
ata2: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
It takes about two minutes to get through this part of the boot up.

The same hangup happens when I boot from my flash drive, but I don't know how to view the messages or log files.

After Puppy finishes booting, if I click "mount" on my desktop, my SATA drive is not displayed. I have one SATA drive, 500 GB.

Anyone know how to fix this?
Last edited by Dave54 on Thu 08 May 2008, 02:24, edited 1 time in total.

Dave54
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue 06 May 2008, 15:38

#2 Post by Dave54 »

update:

The SATA controller is on my motherboard, and my motherboard is ASUS P5VD2-X (http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?model ... =11&l3=346)

If it's of any use, I have the output of "lspci -vvnn"
http://pastebin.ca/1009569

I'm updating to the most recent bios to see if that helps.

My kernel version is: Linux puppypc 2.6.21.7

I think this says that my raid controller should be supported: http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html#via8237

Anyway, Ubuntu has never had a problem with my SATA drive.

Dave54
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue 06 May 2008, 15:38

#3 Post by Dave54 »

update, again

I reflashed my bios, but that did nothing.

Looking through my bios settings I noticed I have a JMicron RAID controller. It's currently set to "IDE", and if it's set to "disabled" then even windows doesn't recognize my HD.

Another bios option, "SATA controller mode", is currently set to "IDE".

That's all I have, I really don't know why Puppy can't recognize my SATA drive.

User avatar
rcrsn51
Posts: 13096
Joined: Tue 05 Sep 2006, 13:50
Location: Stratford, Ontario

#4 Post by rcrsn51 »

If you do a forum search for "JMicron" you will find a lot of discussion about this device - none of it positive in terms of compatibility with Puppy.

Dave54
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue 06 May 2008, 15:38

#5 Post by Dave54 »

update:

I found that adding the boot option "puppy all-generic-ide=1" might help. Changing the boot options for Puppy when he's booting off a flash drive was really confusing, so I booted off the CD so I could just enter it as it began to boot.

I have three hard drives: a 50GB, a 250GB, and a SATA 500GB. With this boot option, PMount and mut only saw the 50GB, where before they saw both the 50GB and 250GB. So in short, the boot option didn't work.

My next step is to download the Puppy with the newer kernel to see if it can play nice with JMicron.

Dave54
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue 06 May 2008, 15:38

#6 Post by Dave54 »

:D RESOLVED!!! :D

If Puppy 4.00 can't correctly detect your SATA hard drive, especially if you have a JMicron RAID controller, here's what you should do: Use the (currently experimental) version of Puppy 4.00 that has the 2.6.25 kernel.

I had a bit of trouble installing the 2.6.25 kernel version of Puppy 4.00 on my usb drive. When it asked if I wanted to wipe all the contents from my flash drive, if I said yes, it printed out something like "umount failed, device was busy." It then continued to "successfully install" Puppy on the flash drive, but it seems it never wrote a bit (literally) to the drive itself. This problem was easily fixed by answering "no" to that question.

Puppy now sees ALL my hard drives and partitions, which is quite impressive considering how many I have:
- a 500GB SATA 3Gbps hard drive with one ext3 partition
- a 750GB eSATA 3Gbps hard drive with an ext3 and a vfat partition
- a 250GB PATA hard drive with an ext3 and an ntfs partition
- a 60GB PATA hard drive with an ext3 partition
- my flash drive and cdrom drive

When the other Puppy began to boot up, it would print something like, "OK, booting the kernel," and then stay like that for five minutes. Now that step takes about five seconds. :D

I hope this thread allows others to avoid this headache.

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