[SOLVED] can't add 6th hard drive (fc8)

[ggenglish]

I'm running fedora 8 on a mobo with 1 ide controller and 6 sata ports. I use this computer as a samba file server essentially with only a power cable and network cable on the back of it (i.e. pure text terminal install ).

I have 2 ide drives and 3 sata drives. No raid configuration, JBOD. This setup is working with devices /dev/sda -> /dev/sde.

When I add an additional sata drive instead of the system booting up and me having a /dev/sdf available to partition and mount. I get a [FAILED] I believe at the "Checking filesystems" point. Basically it seems that which ever port I plug the sata drive into, it conflicts with the port beside it. Thus if in the first port available it will say "No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/sdc1". If I move it to the next one it says the same thing but with value /dev/sdd1.

The bios will show the new hard drive.

Hopefully this is enough information. I figure it could be any number of things but probably obvious for you linux gurus.

Thanks in advance for all that take the time to help.

[OS]
/proc/version: Linux version 2.6.23.1-42.fc8 (<removed>) (gcc version 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-33)) #1 SMP Tue Oct 30 13:55:12 EDT 2007

[MOBO]
P5E-VM HDMI ( at the time was the cheapest mobo to get me 6 sata ports with onboard video)

[corysmith]

If you start with a total of 5 hard drives, two of which are IDE and three of which are SATA, I would expect you to have:

/dev/hda #IDE 1
/dev/hdb #IDE 2

/dev/sda #SATA 1
/dev/sdb #SATA 2
/dev/sdc #SATA 3

Then if you add another SATA drive you get:

/dev/sdd #SATA 4

Keep in mind there might be other hd and sd instances for CD/DVD and USB drives.

Please verify your configuration.

[ggenglish]

Thanks for you reply Cory. Yes, originally I was surprised too that they showed up as scsi devices but I assure that's what they are.

In preparing the fdisk dump for Cory I notice now there are these /dev/dm-X devices. I'm not sure what those are or whether they could be affecting the problem. I think they relate to usb storage devices I may have attached in the past. Not sure about that though.

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1df81df7

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          25      200781   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              26       30401   243995220   8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1       38913   312568641   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 750.1 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x294020f8

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1               1       91201   732572001   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdd: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x2864e548

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdd1               1      121601   976760001   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sde: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd47c0210

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sde1               1      182401  1465136001   83  Linux

Disk /dev/dm-0: 247.7 GB, 247732371456 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30118 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 2080 MB, 2080374784 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 252 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x30307800

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

[corysmith]

Does dm-0 match the specs for your 6th drive?

[ggenglish]

2Gb and 250Gb? No way. The new drive is a 1.5Tb. For now I've dropped the 320Gb and on doing so fedora fired up and the 1.5Tb is now /dev/sdb.

I'm surprised no one else has hit this problem before. I guess most of you guys are using raid cards and don't nickel and dime it like myself.

Thanks for trying to help CorySmith, and to all else that took the time to read.

[corysmith]

Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

I am sure you know that Fedora contains alpha and beta versions of the RHEL software, so it's possible that you are simply experiencing an old bug.

Best of luck.

[ggenglish]

@corysmith

i had suspected this was a mobo config problem so i had posted the question on a mobo forum as well and referenced this post. A helpful person there found the solution for me. As it turns out if i switched sata config in the bios from IDE to AHCI it did the trick. fc8 boots up with /dev/sdf now no problem.

Thanks again for the help.