[Bartender]

I talked a friend into trying out Ubuntu. He just got a new PC to replace one that lost its PATA HDD. So, the old PC is a perfect candidate for experimentation. He's talking about putting a SATA HDD into the old PC. Has anyone had any experience using add-in SATA controller PCI cards in Linux? I sure don't want him to buy the controller card and SATA HDD unless we know it's gonna work...

[saikee]

Not done it myself but technically there is nothing to stop an add-in Sata controller from working in a mobo equipped with only IDE buses.

SATA and PATA are in fact the same disk hardware wise. It is only he interface that is different.

[prunejuice]

I added a Silicon Image SATA controller card on a motherboard (A7N8X-X) that didn't have SATA onboard. My Kubuntu installation CD picked up the controller card
right away. No problems.

MASTER IDE Drive ----> Mandriva Installation
SLAVE IDE Drive ----> Formatted as ext2 strictly for storage
SATA Drive on controller card ----> Kubuntu Installation