CentOS

Hi,

I've recently replaced the motherboard on my computer and for some reason when installing CentOS it now shows the drive as hda instead of sda. Before replacing the motherboard (it was faulty) it showed up as sda. This wouldn't really be a problem but as the drive shows as hda the transfer speeds are also very low and CentOS installation takes nearly 2 hours!

Does anyone have any idea what I could do to fix this? I have checked the motherboard BIOS and there aren't any setting to change the hard drive to legacy mode (IDE) etc. The motherboard does support SATA II so it's very confusing :-(

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-G41MT-D3V
Hard Drive: 1TB Samsung HD103SJ SpinPoint F3 SATA-II

Welcome to the CentOS fora. Please see the recommended reading for new users linked in my signature.

Sounds like it is defaulting to legacy mode. You need to enable AHCI in the BIOS.

Thanks Phil, unfortunately the BIOS doesn't have this option or one similar to it. I've even checked the manual looking for a hidden option.

Have you checked for BIOS updates or contacted the manufacturer? That seems to be a rather significant defect.

I contacted Gigabyte and this is their response (not good!):

[quote]Hi, Sorry but the AHCI option is not available on this board. Please refer to the user manual for more details. The HDD is show as IDE in BIOS and it run as SATA standard. You may install benchmark or HDD utility to check the speed. http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3798#manual[/quote]

I've just decided to try CentOS 6 and the drives show as sda and also run faster. Guess I'll have to use CentOS 6. :-)

Thanks for reporting back. I'd pick CentOS-6 for new hardware anyway, unless there is a good reason to stay with an older version. Marking this thread [RESOLVED] for posterity.