SATA-II on a Gigabyte DS4

[acrobat]

Anyone got their SATA-II hard disks working well on a Gigabyte DS4?

I had mine plugged into the normal SATA ports on the motherboard, but PC Wizard said they where not running at SATA-II speeds.

So I put the cable into the seperate G-SATA ports instead. Now it says SATA in PC Wizard but I can no longer monitor the temperature of the drives, and I have a "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in my taskbar now which won't go.

Anyone got any advice about this please?

[machinist]

If noone has any specific advice for you, I can highly recommend Gigabyte's technical support service. I've used them in the past, and they always have good responses to questions (and great returns policy too).

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/ServiceCenter.aspx

[acrobat]

Thanks! I actually used that to get help on something else but never got a reply I think it was because I used my Gmail account, so now that I know its good, I'll do it again with my proper email address I got for work.

[BUFF]

Anyone got their SATA-II hard disks working well on a Gigabyte DS4?

I had mine plugged into the normal SATA ports on the motherboard, but PC Wizard said they where not running at SATA-II speeds.

Remember that the 300 is the interface speed limit & not what the drive is capable of mechanically. Typical continuous transfer will be ~60.

[d3fiant]

the 'safely remove hardware' icon shows that the drives are running in SATA2 mode, this is the hot plug feature which allows you to notify the OS u are going to remove a drive while the OS is running (excludes the system drive obviously), this simply ensures all cache data is written prior to removal

[acrobat]

Ahhh! Thats good to know, thank you! So I'm pretty sure its running in SATA2 mode now anyway.

The only thing I need to figure out now, is how to get the AHCI mode active while still being able to use my IDE DVD-ROM drive. Currently its either both hard drives and DVD active in IDE mode, or just the hard drives active in AHCI mode.

Having the disks working in SATA2 properly is a step in the right direction now though anyway Thanks all.

[Lakeuk]

On a side note do all your USB ports on Gigabyte DS4 run at 2.0 speeds, on mine only 2 of the six run at full speed, rest show on the boot up screen as 1.1

[acrobat]

I haven't checked yet to be honest. I have only just plugged in my Dad's USB pen briefly just to check that it works.

How would I check? If I can do it by looking at bios and by maybe plugging in a USB pen, I will check to find out.

I have the 2 on the front panel working, and the 4 on the back panel. So if you can tell me where to look, I'll check it out. I would be interested to know too.


P.S.
By the way, my DVD-ROM drive is working now - even with my 2 hard drives running in SATA-II mode I still haven't tried getting it to run in AHCI mode yet - I will do that later. But Im really happy to have the disks running in SATA mode and the DVD working.

The only wierd thing, is seeing them listed as being in (port?) 7 and 8 or something when the bios boots up. Originally it was Master 0 and Master 1, but that wasn't SATA mode. Not sure it matters though really.

[Agent]

Anyone got their SATA-II hard disks working well on a Gigabyte DS4?

I had mine plugged into the normal SATA ports on the motherboard, but PC Wizard said they where not running at SATA-II speeds.........

This is covered almost weekly
There is no such thing as 'SATA2 speeds'. It is a myth.
See : http://www.sata-io.org/namingguidelines.asp
A drive can be SATA2 and only have a 150 interface

[BUFF]

A drive can be SATA2 and only have a 150 interface

& not even reach that as a transfer rate

[Agent]

the 'safely remove hardware' icon shows that the drives are running in SATA2 mode, this is the hot plug feature which allows you to notify the OS u are going to remove a drive while the OS is running (excludes the system drive obviously), this simply ensures all cache data is written prior to removal

This has nothing to do with SATA2 what-so-ever
Hot-plugging was part of the SATA spec from its first release

[Agent]

& not even reach that as a transfer rate

Yeah, you need "SATA2" cables for that

[BUFF]

just don't go there - someone will think that you are being truthful about that ...

[acrobat]

This is covered almost weekly
There is no such thing as 'SATA2 speeds'. It is a myth.
See : http://www.sata-io.org/namingguidelines.asp
A drive can be SATA2 and only have a 150 interface

Lol sorry im a spammer Im usually pretty good with searching but I dont think I did with this issue

In fairness to me though, I did know about SATA2 not running at any super fancy speeds, but still, it was listed in PC Wizard (and something else I think) as not running in SATA mode at all - nevermind SATA2 speeds. So I had to do something anyway. But when I unplugged the data cables from the motherboard, and plugged them into the two lonely (G)SATA ports instead of the numerous other SATA ports, it now lists my disks as running as SATA in pretty much everything

It actually seems slightly faster too... but that may be my imagination.

Thanks for the link by the way!

This has nothing to do with SATA2 what-so-ever
Hot-plugging was part of the SATA spec from its first release

That may actually support my theory that the disks werent even running as SATA before? Because that icon has only appeared since I plugged them into the (G)SATA ports on the mobo.

just don't go there - someone will think that you are being truthful about that ...

I was just about to ask haha. Ok. Well my disks seem to be running well now anyway, and everything is listed as SATA, and it even mentions it in the bios as it boots up So im happy.

Thanks all for the help.

[Agent]

That may actually support my theory that the disks werent even running as SATA before? Because that icon has only appeared since I plugged them into the (G)SATA ports on the mobo.



I was just about to ask haha. Ok. Well my disks seem to be running well now anyway, and everything is listed as SATA, and it even mentions it in the bios as it boots up So im happy.

Thanks all for the help.

If they were connected to a SATA port, they must have been running in SATA mode, but I can guess what’s happening here.
The BIOS has the ability when SATA is built in to the chipset to "mask" the SATA ports as IDE channels. This allows windows to be installed to the drive without needing drivers. Not only windows - any OS.
When PCwizard was looking at the drive, it was seeing it as an IDE one due to the way the BIOS is handling the drive.

Im also guessing that the two lonely SATA ports are handled by a different controller. When this is the case, windows must load drivers for it. These SATA drivers would have hot-swap support unlike the IDE driver that would have been loaded above, explaining why you didn’t get the icon.

I don’t know your setup, so all the above is purely guess work. But I bet its not far off

[acrobat]

I bet that is exactly right It sounds right to me anyway.

Actually, before I let this thread die.... I suppose I should take the opportunity to ask one more question!

Now that its plugged into "the two lonely (G)SATA" ports, during the boot up and in the BIOS, it shows the disks in the 7th port (IRQ? I cant remember I'd have to reboot to check).

Usually it said Primary Master 0 and the other disk was in Primary Master 1.

Now one disk is in Primary Master 7 and the second disk is in Secondary Master 7.

Does that matter? Each disk has its very own data cable, so I'm not sure why it is saying secondary. But does it matter? And also, does it matter that its on those later slots rather than Primary Master 0 and 1? I know this is a Gigabyte DS4 specific question so if nobody knows, I'll understand Unfortunately they have no forum, and never replied to my personal email so if anyone here happens to know, please let me know