[NTLUG:Discuss] OT: Stupid hardware question

[Robert Citek]

On Jan 18, 2008 6:14 PM, Dennis Myhand <dmyhand at suddenlink.net> 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

Hard to tell if you will or won't.  Depends entirely on your system.
The biggest issue will probably be boot order, which is specified in
the BIOS.  After that, you may have issues with device naming, e.g.
/dev/sda becomes /dev/sdb or other.

On way to minimize device naming issues is to use labels or UUIDs,
which Ubuntu and probably other recent distros use.  For example,
here's my system, which I've setup to use labels:

sudo echo -n ; (
set -x
sudo vol_id --label $(findfs LABEL=ubuntu)
grep -i ubuntu /etc/fstab
grep ubuntu /boot/grub/menu.lst
)

++ findfs LABEL=ubuntu
+ sudo vol_id --label /dev/sda5
ubuntu
+ grep -i ubuntu /etc/fstab
LABEL=ubuntu    /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
+ grep ubuntu /boot/grub/menu.lst
# kopt=root=LABEL=ubuntu ro
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=LABEL=ubuntu ro
quiet splash
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=LABEL=ubuntu ro single

The advantage of labels and UUIDs is that you no longer have to worry
about what device the kernel assigns it to.

Regards,
- Robert