I have bought a 500GB SATA 2 hard disk and installed XP Pro with slipstreamed SATA drivers.

All seems good, fast boot etc, BUT, in device manager I have two SATA controllers listed, BUT the SATA 2 drive looks to be installed on the Primary IDE running at Ultra DMA 5?


I only have one DVD drive on the IDE port and the other is the SATA 2 500gb.

Two IDE ports are being used, one at UDMA 4 (the DVD drive) and one at UDMA 5 which must be the Hard drive?

Is there any way to test the speed of the hard drive so I can be sure its running in SATA mode? I have no AHCI option in the bios of hte motherboard.

The advertising says definitely 4 SATA 2 - 3gb ports.

I would THINK that its running in IDe compatibility mode, and if thats so, surely it cant be running at 3gbs?

IIRC the transfer rate of sata yielded minimal or no gains over IDE, for the reason that hard drives can't read or write at either full IDE or sata theoretical speeds.

I like sata because the cables are neater and easier to route.

Also I think my computers say the same thing, when the drives are connected to sata only.

I know you've done many builds, so if this reply is too simplistic, its meant with good intentions.

On my mobo, IDE compatibility mode (selected in the BIOS) allows you to install an OS on a SATA drive without selecting F6 and using driver diskettes. This is how I do it, but it is a matter of preference, not correctness. After the OS is installed and the onboard SATA controllers enabled, the drivers are installed and system rebooted. At that point, your SATA drives should be seen and operational.

My system has two onboard controllers along with a PCI RAID controller. Here is the information from device manager and dxdiag (system devices).




Onboard SATA I controller
Name: ULi SATA/RAID Controller (M1689/M1567)
Device ID: PCI\VEN_10B9&DEV_5289&SUBSYS_52891849&REV_10\3&267A616A&0&91
Driver: C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\m5289.sys, 5.00.0003.0000 (English), 7/4/2005 17:21:00, 52480 bytes

Onboard SATA II controller
Name: JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI Controller
Device ID: PCI\VEN_197B&DEV_2360&SUBSYS_03601849&REV_02\4&2FF59A88&0&0018
Driver: C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\JAHCI.sys, 5.00.1636.0001 (English), 10/24/2005 23:35:34, 33280 bytes
Driver: C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\JGOGO.sys, 5.00.3790.0001 (English), 5/12/2005 09:19:14, 7680 bytes

PCI RAID (SATA II) controller
Name: Silicon Image SiI 3132 SoftRaid 5 Controller
Device ID: PCI\VEN_1095&DEV_3132&SUBSYS_71321095&REV_01\4&3986A286&0&0010
Driver: C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\Si3132r5.sys, 1.05.0018.0000 (English), 10/9/2008 19:40:34, 217128 bytes
Driver: C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\SiWinAcc.sys, 1.00.0000.0011 (English), 10/9/2008 19:40:34, 17064 bytes
Driver: C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\SiRemFil.sys, 1.01.0007.0000 (English), 10/9/2008 19:40:34, 12200 bytes
Driver: C:\WINDOWS\system32\SilSupp.dll, 3.00.0029.0000 (English), 10/9/2008 19:40:36, 119848 bytes

Your SATA II drive should be seen in your BIOS. The only time I've had a SATA drive listed as an IDE device is when lightening struck at my neighbors and permanatly damaged the drive.

Thanks for the replies,

Esp Steves detailed answer.

What has me confused is why the hard disc is seemingly using hte primary hard disc IDE channel.
I was expecting it to 'move over' to the SATA channel after a reboot, as my Nforce4 board does. BUT I saw no 'found new hardware - sATA etc after the reboot.

In my IDE device manager, I see 2 primary channels and two secondary. The motherboard only has one IDE port so the second IDE channel would seem to be the SATA channel I am using.

Not being able to specify AHCI in the bios makes this the more confusing as I cannot be sure. I have googled this and found not clear answer, so hoping anyoine can shed some light on the matter. Its a P31 Neo V2 motherboard.

This one has me a little confused.

Just found out from MSI forums that its meant to be that way.

SATA is a form of IDE apparantly, and this has confused many people in the past.

quote:

Originally posted by Xiolablu3:
Just found out from MSI forums that its meant to be that way.

SATA is a form of IDE apparantly, and this has confused many people in the past.

Thats not correct...

The probable reason it shows as an IDE device (and did not load drivers) is because your mainboard has Legacy modus enabled for the SATA controler/ports.

@Julian265, SATA does give a good advantage over IDE, i tested this with 2 the same Samsung HDD, 1 IDE and 1 SATA, the SATA version did give a higher performance rating in both Windows as in PC-Wizard.

quote:

Originally posted by NDS_Camp.:

Thats not correct...

The probable reason it shows as an IDE device (and did not load drivers) is because your mainboard has Legacy modus enabled for the SATA controler/ports.

.

But its still running in SATA 2 mode apparantly


http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=113802.0

http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=104205.0

http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=131304.0

It is running as SATA but it does have limitations compaired to normal SATA mode.

Think you should be able to change it in the Bios

Hi mate, I cant unfortunatly, no AHCI mode in the bios.

Should be fine however. Loading and booting are super fast.

AHCI does not matter. Check your BIOS for SATA /IDE settings. If your drive is SATA2 it should be able to use UDMA6 mnode. Beware though, many motherboards will only support this on the primary IDE channel (as listed in Win Device Manager) if the controller is working in legacy IDE mode. Check if the Primary IDE is listed twice in Device Manager.

Switch in BIOS to SATA mode. IDE will put it into legacy IDE mode. - Often there are choices IDE - SATA - AHCI - AHCI might give problems with Windows.

Check your Mobo mfg site if there are updates to the BIOS. They might add SATA/AHCI settings for the controller.

Hi Max, apparantly the ICH7 intel controller uses this mode all the time, which means you dont have to spcify SATA controllers when installin g XP.

There is no SATA/AHCI/RAID settings, only SATA on/off and IDE on/off.

If I switch IDE off it simply ignores the IDE ports (turns them off)

How its set up now is correct. The ICH7 needs no extra drivers. Its running in SATA even tho its reporting ultra DMA 5. Its just a quirk of windows that this mode reports DMA mode 5, I have been assured.

This way of doing things means much less hassle when installing windows. The only downside is the error in reporting the speed, I have been told on teh MSI site. There is no 'other' way, its set up correctly.

I must admit it was a lot easier than the Nvidia SATA controller (f6 to specify driver, make a flopppy, or slipstream) on my old board.

If you are interested, read this post I made on the MSI forums, and the responses. ~)

http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=131304.0

QUOTE :- "The Intel ICH7 Chipset supports IDE/Legacy Mode only. This is nothing unusual and basically affects each board that uses this chipset. The "UDMA" Levels you are referring to actually don't indicate anything of importance when it comes to SATA Drives. Just ignore them. Your SATA HDD is running in SATA-2-Mode if they are SATA-2 drives, because the controller is a SATA-2 Controller. What you are looking it is a misinformed Windows Reading that occurs as a result of the IDE/Legacy Mode (which in this case is still a SATA Mode). Windows is stupid when it comes to these kind of things. Don't let it confuse you."

Thanks for explaining Xiolablu3.

UDMA 5 or 6 is a moot discussion anyhow. Most drives do not perform pas 70 MByte/s. I just bought a set of Seagate 500MB drives. According to Tom's Hardware they are the fastest ATM. My retailer reports read speeds upto 160MB/s. It will be interesting to see what CrystalDiskMark reports when I build them into my gaming rig. The current drives in there just reach 49MB/s

Foranyone thinking to switch to AHCI: Be careful switching to AHCI when you did not install SATA/RAID drivers. You might need to re-install Windows or do a repair install.

Xiolablu3, are you running a RAID configuration?

You dont need to load SATA drives during Windows Install.

I was already suspecting your ICH7 was running legacy mode by default, wich is probably the reason why your mainboard has only 4 SATA ports, it cant suport more than 4 SATA devices in legacy modus.