I don't know if anybody still cares about this problem, but I guess Fedora is off the hook. For those of you playing along at home, my machine has two hard drives, both masters on their respective IDE controllers, hda and hdc, and one CD-ROM, slave on the second port. The system worked fine for 2 years under a 2.4 kernel (RedHat 7.3 and RedHat 9), and indeed still does work if I boot with Mandrake Move or Knoppix, but since I upgraded to Fedora Core 3 I've had nothing but problems when I attempt to do anything on hdc. On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 12:35:45 +0000, Douglas Furlong <douglas.furlong@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > The file Documentation/ide.txt in the 2.4 kernel > > distinctly recommends that you put your two hard drives on separate > > IDE controllers, and put your CD-ROM as a slave on the same controller > > as one of your hard drives, which is how I've always done it. > > However, the same file in the 2.6 kernel suggests not mixing device > > types on the same controller. I think I'm going to have to buy > > another IDE controller and see if I have better luck with the CD-ROM > > on hde. > > Can you not just unplug your systems cd-rom drive and see if you get > that performance back? This would be a quicker and cheaper initial test > then buying new hardware? I unplugged the cd-rom, and still have the problem. So I tried Knoppix, first normally (which boots a 2.4 kernel) which worked, and then with the "knoppix26" boot option (which boots a 2.6 kernel), and it has the problem was well. I tried with "knoppix26 nodma", and it hung and refused to boot. I'm currently running memtest (because it was on the Knoppix boot disk, so I figured "what the hell). When I'm done that, I'll try putting the second hard drive on the first IDE controller as a slave and see if that helps. -- "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Teddy Roosevelt