[TriLUG] new SATA drive 101

[Ron Yorgason]

Yes, /dev/sdb is your new sata drive.  They pretend to be SCSI drives, 
and thus use the sd* convention.  You're not seeing /dev/sda in your 
/etc/fstab because when you installed CentOS, it defaults to using LVM 
to lay out your drive, so you see /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 instead of 
/dev/sda2.  It also uses label names instead of /dev/sd* because to make 
things more flexible when adding hard drives, so you see LABEL=/boot 
instead of /dev/sda1.

And yes, since sdb is unformatted, you won't see a /dev/sdb1 until you 
format it.

--Ron

Christopher L Merrill wrote:
> So I'm back in the Linux world for a while - and thought I'd better check
> my understanding before I format something important :>
> 
> I'm adding a new drive to a machine that has the following
> 1 SATA drive that was present during installation of the OS (CentOS 4)
> 1 CD-ROM drive
> 1 IDE HDD added post-OS-install, containing a single partition
> 1 new SATA drive (right out of the box)**
> 
> I recognize these devices and think I know what they are:
> /dev/hda - CD ROM
> /dev/hdc - IDE HDD
> /dev/hdc1 - partition on IDE HDD
> /dev/sda - 1st SATA HDD
> /dev/sda1,2 - 2 primary partitions on 1st (original) SATA HDD
> 
> here's the one I want to be sure I've got right:
> /dev/sdb -- the NEW, unformatted SATA HDD
> (there is no /dev/sdb1)
> 
> The reason I'm a little unsure is that I don't see any references to
> /dev/sda in the fstab:
> 
>> [root at lab6 ~]# cat /etc/fstab
>> # This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
>> /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /                       ext3    
>> defaults        1 1
>> LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    
>> defaults        1 2
>> none                    /dev/pts                devpts  
>> gid=5,mode=620  0 0
>> none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs   
>> defaults        0 0
>> none                    /proc                   proc    
>> defaults        0 0
>> none                    /sys                    sysfs   
>> defaults        0 0
>> /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap                    swap    
>> defaults        0 0
>> /dev/hdc1               /data                   ext2    
>> defaults        1 2
>> /dev/hda                /media/cdrom            auto    
>> pamconsole,fscontext=sys
>> tem_u:object_r:removable_t,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
>> [root at lab6 ~]#
> 
> 
> Am I correct in my understanding that the SATA drives are mapped 
> differently
> from the IDE drives - and that /dev/sdb is my shiny new HDD?
> 
> Is formatting a SATA drive any different than an IDE drive?
> 
> TIA,
> C
> 
> 
> 


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