SATA drivers for 80821 (ich7) controller

[Voja]

Hello all,
I'm having a "challenge" finding solution for sata driver or any solution without recompiling the kernel (Red Hat Ent. Linux 4 Upd. 3)
The machine is a remote one (and that is the biggest problem), some Z intellistation as I recall (I'll try to ask somebody for the exact model), which has SATA drives which work in "compatibility" mode, as hdX, not sdX - here is some output from system:

lspci | grep IDE

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE (rev 01)

lsmod (last part of it)

ata_piix 11973 0
libata 66057 1 ata_piix
sd_mod 19393 0
scsi_mod 140561 2 libata,sd_mod

hdparm says, as I experience, 4 mb/s instead of at least 10X more.
There are some errors in /var/log/messages which gave me a clue that drives are not performing well because of wrong driver, and setting dma in hdparm is of course "not permitted".
Suggestions, anyone?
Is it possible to recompile a module or something, and do an insmod?
Thank you

 

[Annihilannic]

I wouldn't expect SATA disks to appear as sdX... sdX are SCSI devices?

Annihilannic.

 

[danomac]

Annihilannic: Yes, SATA devices do indeed appear as /dev/sdX.

Voja: Using compatibility mode can cause these types of performance problems.

You need to remove IDE support from the kernel, and only leave the SATA support. (In this case, you may be able to remove the modules or prevent it from loading.)

However, you will need to make some system changes in /etc/fstab: they will still have the old /dev/hdX references.

Any recent kernel will be able to use the SATA drivers only. Any IDE devices found will be given SATA device names (i.e. CDROM drives will become /dev/srX).