On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 09:54:55AM -0700, Carl Johnson wrote: > Steve Kleene <sk...@syrano.acb.uc.edu> writes: > > > Before I build a Lenny system on my 5-year-old PC, I want to replace the two > > internal hard drives. I'm not too swift with hardware specs and want to > > make > > sure I get the right drives. I will probably get 500GB drives and do not > > expect to set up RAID. > > > > The drives now are Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 6K040L0 40GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra > > ATA133. There isn't much of a selection anymore with the ATA100 or ATA133 > > interfaces; most new drives are SATA 3 GB/s. > > > > The motherboard is an Asus P4P800 Deluxe. It has two SATA connectors and > > came with the cables. The motherboard manual says, "The current Serial ATA > > interface allows up to 150 MB/s data transfer rate" (i.e. >133). > > > > So now to the questions: > > > > 1. What difficulties (if any) might I expect in setting up the SATA drives? > > A quick search found quite a few posts where people had to mess with the > > BIOS, add a SATA driver, etc. with this motherboard. > > > > 2. If I buy a SATA 3 GB/s drive, will this motherboard only give me 150 MB/s > > anyway? In that case maybe I should just go with ATA100 or ATA133. I > > assume either would work. > > The standard is *supposed* to be backward compatible, and *should* > automatically negotiate the maximum speed that both can handle. Not > all chipsets handle that properly, so you may need to jumper the drive > to the reduced speed. I saw similar warnings about my VIA chipset, so > when I bought a new drive at a local shop, I specifically asked about > the jumper. They looked it up and gave me a copy of the jumper page > from the manual. I first tried without the jumper, and neither the > BIOS or Linux even saw the drive, but with the jumper it worked > perfectly. Some older BIOSs may not boot properly from SATA drives, > so you may need to keep the older drives for booting. > If your BIOS won't boot from the SATA drive, you can get a PCI SATA controller card from newegg.com for about $30 USD. Of course you need to make sure the drivers for that controller are included in Lenny -- I usually consult the customer reviews to find that info.
-Rob -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
