IDE hard drive appears as a SCSI devive (sda)

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and helping to make Ubuntu better. Examining the information you have given us, this does not appear to be a bug report so we are closing it and converting it to a question in the support tracker. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but it would make more sense to raise problems you are having in the support tracker at https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu if you are uncertain if they are bugs. For help on reporting bugs, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#When%20not%20to%20file%20a%20bug.

I think it's just a naming convention change. Instead of confusing noobs with the differences between hda1 and sda1 it's all been called sda. I think the way the different types of devices are handled is now much less obvious but the different protocols are still there. try a distro like Wolvix if you really want to sink your teeth into something that doesn't pander to dumbing things down for an easy life.

Hopefully that's the case anyway and i'm fairly sure we would be hearing a lot more problems if that wasn't the case.
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Gee, thanks, Tom!

As an intelligent individual who has been working with computers in most every facet imaginable since they were vaccum tubes and relays, I consider your answer to my question as more an insult than assistance.

Unix, or, if you will Linus, was intended to define things as they are....an IDE hard drive consequently has, as long as I can remember been designated by the letter hda for the primary node and hdb for the secondary!

Go back and play in your sandbox!

--- On Fri, 4/3/09, Tom <email address hidden> wrote:

From: Tom <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: [Question #66361]: IDE hard drive appears as a SCSI devive (sda)
To: <email address hidden>
Date: Friday, April 3, 2009, 1:58 PM

Your question #66361 on Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/66361

    Status: Open => Answered

Tom proposed the following answer:
I think it's just a naming convention change.  Instead of confusing
noobs with the differences between hda1 and sda1 it's all been called
sda.  I think the way the different types of devices are handled is now
much less obvious but the different protocols are still there.  try a
distro like Wolvix if you really want to sink your teeth into something
that doesn't pander to dumbing things down for an easy life.

Hopefully that's the case anyway and i'm fairly sure we would be hearing a lot more problems if that wasn't the case.
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

--
If this answers your question, please go to the following page to let us
know that it is solved:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/66361/+confirm?answer_id=1

If you still need help, you can reply to this email or go to the
following page to enter your feedback:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/66361

You received this question notification because you are a direct
subscriber of the question.

I think the naming convention changed with gutsy gibbon - previously IDE had been known as hda, but since gutsy gibbon, IDE has the same designation as SCSI or SATA drives, ie sda or sdb etc...I don't know if this is an ubuntu only convention or whether it is consistent across all the linux distros. If you must have hda as the designation, you would have to revert to 7.04 which is no longer supported. You're right that IDE was always known as hda, but not any more.

I'm not sure that this is just about naming conventions though. I think that somewhere in there there may be a real issue but it does just look like surface fluff at the moment, the way it's presented.

I've had no trouble installing to sata or ide. Both work extremely well.

Surely this has all been discussed before, for example "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"? This particular linux distro, and quite a few others, are aimed at getting linux out there to non-geeky, non techie types. If you want a distro that's more about pure linux then you're looking in the wrong place. There are a lot of distros that are more pure linux but purity does not always lead to diversity or breadth of distribution.

Linux is still not finished yet and using Gnu at least makes it accessible and available to be used but immediately introduces a non-linux cludge. Perhaps we should all sit back and wait until a pure linux OS is completely finished? Personally i like the way it all builds up out of different projects and goes in different directions. Something for everyone?

The existing scsi driver framework had taken over ATA and SATA functions a few years ago, and the old stuff was scrapped. The old driver may be still in the kernel if you want to compile it yourself.

Usb devices also use the scsi driver. It's just cleaner.

So, if unix is showing it 'as it is', then it's still consistent. /dev/sda is done by a scsi driver.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibATA

All it will take is some /etc/fstab editing with a livecd to fix issues caused by this transition. The newer releases use UUID to identify partitions, so it doesn't even matter what driver it's using.