[SLL] unable to mount old drive when it's secondary

[Rob Smith]

On 10/18/07, Ana <christiana at hipointcoffee.com> wrote:
> root at betty:/# mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /mnt
> mount: /dev/sdb1 already mounted or /mnt busy
> root at betty:/# cat /proc/mounts | grep sdb
> root at betty:/# lsof -n | grep mnt
> root at betty:/#
<SNIP>
> It occurred to me today that my old drive is SATA-1 and my new drive is
> SATA-2.  dmesg indicates that the kernel recognizes this and seems to
> initialize each properly.  I wonder though, when SATA-2 is being used as
> the primary drive (with the 3Gb speeds), is it problematic to mount a
> partition on a SATA-1 at a necessarily slower speed?  Is this a known
> limitation or bug?  Perhaps my hardware is somehow unusual?
>
> I have 6 SATA sockets on this new main-board.  One thing I haven't tried
> is plugging the two drives into slots that are very distant from one
> another.  dmesg suggests that the 6 might be grouped in 2's...  so maybe
> three SATA controllers for 6 slots?  I'll try plugging the slower drive
> into the last slot to see if that changes anything, tomorrow.

check /etc/mtab?

Mixing sata-1 and 2 is fine, I do it all the time.

lspci is how you would show the number of sata controlers, and
typially it will only be one, with three channels of two drives each
channel.

if your drive is hot swap safe, I'd boot up and then plug in the drive
and see if I could mount it then. That would prevent any boot-time
weirdness from screwing with things.

~Rob