I booted a system which has a Serial ATA (SATA) drive in it from a Knoppix 5.0.1 LiveCD, but could not get the operating system to recognize the presence of the hard drive. So I then booted from a Slax LiveCD, but it did not recognize the drive either. The version of Slax I tried was the SLAX KillBill Edition 5.1.8.1. I then booted the system with a Sabayon 3.4e DVD. I was able to access the SATA drive then.
The problem is apparently due to the other distributions of Linux not recognizing the Serial ATA chipset on the motherboard of the system, at least for the versions that I was using. The system has a PCChips A31G V:1.0 motherboard According to Serial ATA (SATA) chipsets ? Linux support status, "Some SATA chipsets have been supported since practically forever, as their programming interfaces are unchanged from PATA predecessors. Others are brand-new and require new drivers from scratch.
Refererences:
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LiveCD
Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia
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Serial ATA (SATA) chipsets ? Linux support status
Revised: February 27, 2007
Linuxmafia
