Member Avatar for Sturm

I have tried some distros of linux but only a few ever work (ubuntu and zenwalk are the only ones). All other distros I have tested (debian, my own rbuilder distro, and foresight) do not work. They never can detect my hardrive. I have a hp dv6000t laptop. I do not know exactly what kind of hardrive is but when I installed ubuntu it said my hardrive was "SCSI1 100 GB ATA ST9100824A5".

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ran into a common installer problem and was right to point at the storage driver as the root cause. The practical path forward is a short diagnostic + targeted fixes: identify the controller, confirm whether the running kernel has a driver for it, and either load that module or use an installer/live image with a newer kernel that includes the driver.

Useful quick diagnostics (run from any live CD that does see disks):

# identify the storage controller
sudo lspci -nn | egrep -i "sata|ide|storage|raid"

# check kernel messages for ata/sata activity
dmesg | egrep -i "ata|libata|ahci|sata|scsi" | tail -n 50

# list currently loaded modules that handle SATA/ATA
lsmod | egrep -i "ahci|ata_piix|libata|pata|sata"

# try loading common drivers (only on a working live environment)
sudo modprobe ahci
sudo modprobe ata_piix
dmesg | tail -n 40

Interpreting results and next steps:

  • If lspci shows a vendor/device, look up that PCI ID to find the driver name; loading the matching module with modprobe often makes the disk appear.
  • If modules are missing or modprobe fails, boot an installer/live image with a newer kernel (modern installers include libata/AHCI drivers).
  • Check BIOS/firmware SATA mode (AHCI vs IDE/compatibility). Switching modes can help detection but may prevent an existing OS from booting without driver changes—backup first.
  • If a RAID metadata layer exists (Intel "fake-RAID"), use an installer that includes dmraid or use software RAID tools.

References for driver names and further reading: and the kernel libata docs at .

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Member Avatar for Sturm

I checked the hp website supposdly I have a SATA hardrive not an ATA one. But whatever...

Member Avatar for John A

I checked the hp website supposdly I have a SATA hardrive not an ATA one. But whatever...

That's your problem. Many older Linux distributions (i.e. v2.4 kernels) still don't have kernel support for the newer SATA hard drives, and thus cannot recognize it. I had similar problems trying to run Linux on my MacBook, which also uses a SATA hard drive.

For Debian, usually the easiest thing to do is to download the version, which although is not totally safe, it's not as unreliable as you might think.

Other distros often have SATA-enabled kernels, so read the documentation to find out!

Member Avatar for Sturm

Ok thanks ill look into that!

Member Avatar for Sturm

Umm...I have been looking around and supposdly a new debian version is coming this feb or mar. Will this new version have the new kernel? And whats with these old kernels? I looked at slackware it seems to have a 2.4 kernel too. They said that the 2.6 kernel is under expiremental? Isn't the 2.6 kernel a official release (i.e. not developmental)?

Member Avatar for John A

Umm...I have been looking around and supposdly a new debian version is coming this feb or mar. Will this new version have the new kernel?

Don't know; I don't really keep track of those sorts of things. ;)

And whats with these old kernels? I looked at slackware it seems to have a 2.4 kernel too. They said that the 2.6 kernel is under expiremental? Isn't the 2.6 kernel a official release (i.e. not developmental)?

It's not that the 2.6 kernel is unstable, but a lot of distros choose the older 2.4 kernel because it's more stabe, and sometimes faster. You can always install your own kernels later, so in the bigger scheme of things it doesn't make that much of a difference.

Member Avatar for Sturm

It does when you cannot install the distro because of the old kernel!

Member Avatar for John A

It does when you cannot install the distro because of the old kernel!

Well, yes I neglected to mention that. :) However, any "modern" distro will almost always have an alternative kernel for SATA computers. They don't want to lose their users simply because of a silly hard drive issue.

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