[NTLUG:Discuss] OT: Stupid hardware question

[Chris Cox]

Dennis Myhand wrote:
> Stuart Johnston wrote:
>> Dennis Myhand wrote:
>>> I am thinking about getting some extra storage and going big in the 
>>> process.  I am running ATA100 IDE drives on both of my systems, and they 
>>> are both capable of using SATA drives.  Can I add an SATA drive to a 
>>> system when the OS is on an ATA100 hard drive?  Will this cause problems 
>>> or will it work seamlessly?  Thanks, Dennis
>> As long as the OS supports SATA, it will work fine.  Under Linux, the 
>> IDE drives will be named like /dev/hda1 but the SATA drives will be 
>> /dev/sda1.
>>
> 
> Great.  Thanks
>

Alas, this is no longer true in most contemporary setups.  Both will
be /dev/sd* devices.  So... first on the bus will get /dev/sda
and so on (I think SATA devices take precedence??).

So, it CAN be a potential gotcha.

If you already have Linux on your host and your device is
called /dev/hd* whatever, then indeed, there will be no
problem.  But if this were a relatively new version of Linux,
your root drive would likely be /dev/sda, and then when you
add the SATA, it's possible that it would become /dev/sda
and push your old root/boot drive to /dev/sdb (causing
a bit of a panic).

All is recoverable though and there is plenty of advice, some
correct, some more correct, some excellent and some that
are totally bogus or misleading.

Discussing how to do this kind of damage control would make
a great presentation (volunteers?).  Or... you can alway
make me do it (sigh).