Comment 97 for bug 228302

> First thing I did is to see if my drives are /dev/sdX or /dev/hdX, and
> they are still /dev/sdX...so did a

What's wrong with having drives named as /dev/sdX ?
Historically SCSI drives were named /dev/sdX, while IDE /dev/hdX.
Since some time ago any hard drive is named /dev/sdX regardless
whether its IDE/ATA, IDE/SATA or SCSI, there is one uniform interface.

> lee@HOME:~$ sudo hdparm -c1 /dev/sda
>
> /dev/sda:
>  setting 32-bit IO_support flag to 1
>  HDIO_SET_32BIT failed: Invalid argument
>  IO_support    =  0 (default)
>
>

Mind that hdparm is a tool which was tailored towards IDE drives only.
It is compatible with old interface (/dev/hdX) but only partially with
the new one (/dev/sdX).

> So, is there anything I need to do to make my system change the drives from /dev/sdX to /dev/hdX?

There is no point in doing that.

> Also, right this second, which is being used right this second?
> ata_generic or pata_ali?  How can I verify which is in use right now?

dmesg will give you all the information you need. It displays kernel
messages (additionally they go to /var/log directory). So you can open
a terminal and try:

dmesg | less

to browse through all the messages. If you want to find out what mode
the hard drive is switched to search (to search press /) for lines
starting with:

ata1 (for the 1st controller) or ata2 (second). In my case I have

[ 0.517229] ata1.00: ATA-7: Maxtor 6L200P0, BAH41G10, max UDMA/133

... a few more lines here

[ 0.572323] ata1.01: ATA-6: WDC WD1200JB-00GVA0, 08.02D08, max UDMA/100

... a few more lines here

[ 0.572362] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
[ 0.572365] ata1.01: configured for UDMA/100

Which says what respective DMA modes are enabled for my hard drives.

> Also, if any updates happen, with they wipe out this change I am trying
> to make?  And will I have to do this change everytime a certain thing
> gets updated?

The change you made is permanent, regardless of the updates.

>
> I dont know if this matters, but I am using Prelink and Preload.
>

No It doesn't. However, Preload does not do much from my experience
but it might depend on how much memory you have and how fast the
disk(s) is(are).