New PATA/IDE HDD DOA?

English Hardware
1

Well sort of…
HDD: WD Caviar Blue 500 GB PATA Hard Drives ( WD5000AAKB ) & Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKB 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Trying to install openSUSE 11.3 x86_64

I ordered a new (OEM) HDD from Newegg.com for the purpose of installing openSUSE 11.3 but it is being problematic. It is detected fine by the BIOS with either jumper setting (cable select or master). Smart mode is enabled. I also tried a new IDE cable but that didn’t make a difference either.

I’ve tried installing openSUSE from the openSUSE 11.3 Install DVD, the KDE Four Live 4.5.0 CD and the KDE Reloaded 4.5.2 CD (which I’m running now) all to no avail.

The HDD is some times detected & displayed by the KDE Partitions KCM module (can’t seem to get it to reliably display or not display the HDD or not). The yast partitioner module detects it but produces this upon starting:

The partitioning on disk /dev/sdf is not readable by the partitioning tool parted, which is used to change the partition table. You can use the partitions on disk /dev/sdf as they are. You can format them and assign mount points to them, but you cannot add, edit, resize, or remove partitions from that disk with this tool.

The problem is that the HDD is NOT displayed in the Hard Drives or Unused Devices lists. The partitioner module does however produce this log output:
SUSE Paste
I’m unable to install using the KDE Four orKDE Reloaded live discs because of the HDD not being listed in the yast partitioner module. Interestingly I AM able to get much further in the install process with the openSUSE 11.3 Install DVD. It froze three times in two different spots though. I’m able to get as far as the user setup but it freezes when “retrieving the cracklib rpm” or whatever for the password encryption (I think).

I was able to boot with the Parted Magic (5.6) Live USB disk I created (with the SUSE Studio Image Writer, VERY handy tool btw) and analyze the HDD. I ran all the Smart Monitor tests and none of them detected any problems at all which indicates that there likely wasn’t any physical damage during shipping or a physical hardware problem with the HDD. I was able to create an (msdos) partition table, which apparently needed to be done, format it (with ext4) and mount it without a problem. Do note however that these problems were occuring before doing this as well.

This is the only HDD in the system and strangely, if I use the single master jumper setting (no jumper used at all) the drive is device sdf (along with the sdf1 partition) but if I use the cable select jumper setting, it is detected as sda.

Here is the boot.msg log file which contains several things relevant to the HDD:
SUSE Paste

fdisk -l does not produce any output whatsoever.
fdisk /dev/sdf produces: Unable to read /dev/sdf

Does it seem like this HDD was (partially at least) DOA or is defective? I need help in determining this because I can’t figure out for certain on my own. I also need to know so I can RMA (return) this to Newegg by November 17th if it is defective.
Please help me troubleshoot this.
Thanks in advanced for any help/advice.

2

There is some strangeness in it getting assigned sdf, though I don’t know enough about SATA/PATA mixtures to say why this is or if it’s a problem. Can you disable the SATA ports since you don’t seem to be using them?

I’m curious why you chose to buy PATA, since SATA is cheaper for equivalent capacity and you do have SATA ports. Can you return it in exchange for a SATA HD?

3

a common misconception ken: quite a while ago the linux kernel devs ditched the PATA/IDE drivers in favor of using the SATA drivers for PATA/IDE drives. they work for either type of drive and work better than the old drivers. there is no “mixture” of SATA/PATA drives on this PC.
i bought a PATA/IDE HDD because this PC’s mobo doesn’t have SATA ports.

4

I know about the unification of the PATA/SATA drivers, but what I’m referring to is that your boot log apparently shows the kernel detecting SATA ports, and yet you say it has no SATA ports. Or perhaps those were another kind of PATA port?

It’s these lines:

<6>    3.372307] hub 2-0:1.0: 3 ports detected
<6>    3.372528] sata_sis 0000:00:05.0: version 1.0
<7>    3.372563]   alloc irq_desc for 17 on node -1
<7>    3.372566]   alloc kstat_irqs on node -1
<6>    3.372581] sata_sis 0000:00:05.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
<6>    3.372587] sata_sis 0000:00:05.0: Detected SiS 180/181/964 chipset in SATA mode
<6>    3.374832] scsi2 : sata_sis
<6>    3.375392] scsi3 : sata_sis
<6>    3.376311] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xe500 ctl 0xe600 bmdma 0xe900 irq 17
<6>    3.376318] ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xe700 ctl 0xe800 bmdma 0xe908 irq 17

But I see from the UDMA/133 that they are really PATA ports. Maybe even the same ones as below these lines. Perhaps you need to prevent the sata_sis driver from detecting what seem to be the same ports again?

5

i thought you were unaware of the driver situation.
this PC’s mobo does not have SATA ports.

6

check to see if there is an updated BIOS available for that board…

–
DenverD
When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD [posted via NNTP w/openSUSE 10.3]

7

There isn’t a BIOS update that has anything to do with HDDs…

8

sorry.

–
DenverD
When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD [posted via NNTP w/openSUSE 10.3]