ATA HDD on old laptop, should it be sda?

[Havin_it]

Hi,

This is my first taste of *buntu, though I have been using Linux (Mandrake, Gentoo) for a few years now. I installed Kubuntu Hardy on my girlfriend's machine, an elderly Compaq Armada 110S which may have, until yesterday, been the last Windows ME install in christendom

I was pretty sure the drives were IDE (ATA/ATAPI), but the install has them set up as sd* and KInfoCenter shows them on the SCSI bus.

I'm not too well-up on what this all means in real terms, but this is quite a weedy machine and I want to make sure it's as optimised as possible. Should my HDD and CDROM be on the SCSI bus? Is it an issue (for example w.r.t. DMA) or does it not matter? If it does matter, how much of a nightmare is it to correct having now completed installation?

Any info appreciated

[Qqmike]

Re: ATA HDD on old laptop, should it be sda?

Everything, I'm sure, is right & fine.

This change (all hdx & sdx --> sdx) started in Feisty 7.04, along with the use of UUIDs to identify devices (e.g., each /dev/sdx has its unique UUID--see your filesystem table /etc/fstab).

There's technical reasons for it.
Like here:

UUID:
http://www.penguin.ch/dokuwiki/doku....:k_0704:revert
then, Mounting issues:
http://www.penguin.ch/dokuwiki/doku....t#mount_errors
and USB tacking:
http://www.penguin.ch/dokuwiki/doku....ab#usb_tacking
=> => reasoning:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LibAtaForAtaDisks

But, not to worry. Just use the sdx's as you see them.

[Havin_it]

Re: ATA HDD on old laptop, should it be sda?

Qqmike, thanks for the info about this. FYI, it appears the penguin.ch site is deceased (bit o' politics at work according to the link from its homepage) but the last link gave me enough. I cannot but support such altruism towards Alan Cox ;-)

[Qqmike]

Re: ATA HDD on old laptop, should it be sda?

Thanks for the info re the dead penguin.
Actually, we could easily dig up lots of stuff on UUIDs, maybe even Wikipedia.
But that last link on sdx's is kind of interesting re Alan Cox