November 29, 2009 @ 13:59
Ubuntu and VIA VT6421 PCI SATA Howto
I have seen question of how to make VIA VT6421 PCI SATA card work under Ubuntu on number of forum posts and only solutions I have seen on Ubuntu forum was: “Solved:: Installed Windows. Got data no problems.” :(
This obviously is not the solution. I found a solution that works on Ubuntu 8.10 but probably will work on any other Ubuntu version.
So in order to make this device work you need to see what module it uses:
lspci -k|grep -i VT6421 -A 2
01:07.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6421 IDE RAID Controller (rev 50)
Kernel driver in use: sata_via
Kernel modules: sata_via
So we can see that the module this card uses is called “sata_via”, now just load the module for this VIA card and of you go:
sudo modprobe sata_via
Filed under english, linux, tips&tricks Permalink
15 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI
Posted by Michaël Zakrzewski
December 19, 2009 @ 18:59
Hello, I have the VIA VT6421 PCI SATA card on my ubuntu server.
On this card I have 2*500Go and one NTFS partition for data storage in Windows.
On Ubuntu server 9.10 I see two disks, commands
lspci -k|grep -i VT6421 -A 2
and
sudo modprobe sata_via
works but I cant’t see the 1To partition on linux.
Posted by valent
December 20, 2009 @ 1:01
what does command “cat /proc/partition” showes you? What type is 1Tb partition?
Posted by Michaël Zakrzewski
December 20, 2009 @ 2:41
8 0 156290904 sda
8 1 10257471 sda1
8 2 1 sda2
8 5 1477948 sda5
8 16 488386584 sdb
8 18 124 sdb2
8 32 488386584 sdc
8 33 488386552 sdc1
8 48 3144959 sdd
8 49 3136896 sdd1
500Gb disks are sdb and the 1Tb partition is a NTFS partition.
Posted by Michaël Zakrzewski
December 20, 2009 @ 2:48
“are sdb and sdc”
Posted by valent
December 20, 2009 @ 15:13
If all of your disks are visable and usable I don’t get what is your issue? You wrote in your first comment that you only see two disks but now you say that all three are visable. How long have you been using Ubuntu? Are you a new to Ubuntiu and Linux in general? If you are new to Linux I suggest you get some good Ubuntu book that explains the basics.
Cheers!
Posted by Michaël Zakrzewski
December 21, 2009 @ 3:18
No, I have 4 disks on my system :
sda is a 160GB disk and ubuntu is on this disk
sdb(500GB) and sdc(500GB) are on the PCI card with VT6421 chipset and on windows I have a 1TB partition in NTFS with 2*500GB in RAID0 but on ubuntu server I can’t see this 1TB partition and it is the problem
sd is an I-RAM (Gigabyte) 3GB with a NTFS partition for Windowsn XP
Posted by valent
December 21, 2009 @ 8:50
The problem here isn’t that you didn’t give enough information. You needed to say right away that you made your RAID0 UNDER WINDOWS! You didn’t give enough information. VIA card works flawlessly and it is not the problem. You have made “dynamic disk” raid0 under windows, and I have no clue how to make that work under Linux but this link could help you – http://tinyurl.com/yl3zagd
Posted by Michaël Zakrzewski
December 21, 2009 @ 12:15
In windows I have only one disk.
Finally it appears that it is a fake-raid and I use dmraid and it is ok.
I juste dmraid -ay to activate partitions and after I have used mount tu mount partition.
And now with gparted I have thos : http://hfr-rehost.net/http://self/pic/e59e22c36b170830e959d819ce746aa39e4dbcab.jpeg
Thanks for your help !
Posted by Anonymous
July 1, 2010 @ 15:12
how are you seeing the disks? Are they automatically appearing?
Posted by George
July 1, 2010 @ 15:54
How were you able to see the disks. Was it automatic. Have you upgraded to newer versions since and still had success?
Posted by Patrick
July 3, 2010 @ 22:00
Hi! I have a similar problem, I have 2 vt6421 controler card and when I do lspci I see both cards but only the 2 hardrive connect to the first vt6421. The harddisk on the second 6421 is not detected. If I disconnect the first vt6421 I see the disk who was connect to the second vt6421.. any idea?
Posted by valent
July 4, 2010 @ 10:31
@Patrick go to kernel mailing list and try to find out who wrote “sata_via” kernel module and ask him if “sata_via” supports two cards at the same time.
Posted by valent
July 4, 2010 @ 10:32
@George I don’t use this card currently, but there should be no reason to stop working.
Posted by Mihail Pehlivanov
March 31, 2011 @ 22:58
Hi, i’ve got the same VT6421, and i’ve got one hard drive, with two partitions, one is Windows7, second is larger the first and its 440 GB, and on the same card, SATA DVD-RW, but when i insert CD ot DVD, everything is freezin’ all gdm, and cannot go even into console with ctrl+alt+F1, can somebody help me from here?
Posted by Lawrence Gough
December 14, 2011 @ 13:44
Thanks for the info, worked a treat on ubuntu 11.10