Interesting conversation with MS tech support about SATA hard drives and VISTA

[atodzia]

I was just told by MS Tech support for VISTA that they are told that
MS does not support disk related problems with VISTA when it is
installed on SATA hard drives. Just EIDE. I found this strange (they
did too, I think) because most of the major vendors (HP definitely is)
are using SATA drives in their VISTA desktops and laptops. It seems
strange that they would do that and MS will not support disk related
problems with VISTA.

The reason this even came up is I installed Vista on a 500 Gb WD SATA
II hard drive, and it runs fine. In disk manger, I resized the C
partition to 200 Gb and made a second D partition using the rest of
the space. I took all the defaults that disk manger gave me for the D
partition during this process.

When I do a scan disk of the C drive, either 465Gb or when 200 Gb it
finishes successfully and boots into Vista. When I do a scan disk of
the D drive, which VISTA wants to do while rebooting, it finishes
successfully and then I get a blue screen crash. I then power of the
computer, VISTA comes up, and everything is fine.

The end result is that I will live with a 465 Gb C partition for now.
Has anyone heard of this problem or know why it happens?

I tried the repartitioning with Acronis Disk Suite and the same thing
happened. Although, it is interesting, that Acronis will run the scan
disk of the D partition in VISTA without rebooting, and when it is
done the computer does NOT crash.

 

[Guest]

Who cares - no error message was posted.

 

[Harry Krause]

I was just told by MS Tech support for VISTA that they are told that
MS does not support disk related problems with VISTA when it is
installed on SATA hard drives. Just EIDE. I found this strange (they
did too, I think) because most of the major vendors (HP definitely is)
are using SATA drives in their VISTA desktops and laptops. It seems
strange that they would do that and MS will not support disk related
problems with VISTA.

The reason this even came up is I installed Vista on a 500 Gb WD SATA
II hard drive, and it runs fine. In disk manger, I resized the C
partition to 200 Gb and made a second D partition using the rest of
the space. I took all the defaults that disk manger gave me for the D
partition during this process.

When I do a scan disk of the C drive, either 465Gb or when 200 Gb it
finishes successfully and boots into Vista. When I do a scan disk of
the D drive, which VISTA wants to do while rebooting, it finishes
successfully and then I get a blue screen crash. I then power of the
computer, VISTA comes up, and everything is fine.

The end result is that I will live with a 465 Gb C partition for now.
Has anyone heard of this problem or know why it happens?

I tried the repartitioning with Acronis Disk Suite and the same thing
happened. Although, it is interesting, that Acronis will run the scan
disk of the D partition in VISTA without rebooting, and when it is
done the computer does NOT crash.

My 500-gig Samsung SATA is all in one partition, and contains 465 gigs,
the same as yours.

 

[jim kirk]

Hello harry, what led you to do a scan disk in the first place?

Can you empty D again from files and reformat it, but use a full format not
a quick format?

Then try doing a scan disk again..

Also please tell me what kind of machine you have, how old is it?
Do you use a controller that is on the motherboard or perhaps a sata
controller that is a pci card?

 

[Darrell Gorter[MSFT]]

Hello Harry,
SATA drives in general would be supported in WIndows Vista.
It's not really the drive in most cases, but the controller driver that the
question may concern and who supplied that controller driver as to whom the
issue may reside.
What is the error message that you are seeing?
What controller are the SATA drives attached to ( make and model)?
Thanks,
Darrell Gorter[MSFT]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
--------------------
|>From: "jim kirk" <[email protected]>
|>References: <[email protected]>
<[email protected]>
|>In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
|>Subject: Re: Interesting conversation with MS tech support about SATA
hard drives and VISTA
|>Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 04:07:01 +0300
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|>Hello harry, what led you to do a scan disk in the first place?
|>
|>Can you empty D again from files and reformat it, but use a full format
not
|>a quick format?
|>
|>Then try doing a scan disk again..
|>
|>Also please tell me what kind of machine you have, how old is it?
|>Do you use a controller that is on the motherboard or perhaps a sata
|>controller that is a pci card?
|>
|>
|>|>> (e-mail address removed) wrote:
|>>> I was just told by MS Tech support for VISTA that they are told that
|>>> MS does not support disk related problems with VISTA when it is
|>>> installed on SATA hard drives. Just EIDE. I found this strange (they
|>>> did too, I think) because most of the major vendors (HP definitely is)
|>>> are using SATA drives in their VISTA desktops and laptops. It seems
|>>> strange that they would do that and MS will not support disk related
|>>> problems with VISTA.
|>>>
|>>> The reason this even came up is I installed Vista on a 500 Gb WD SATA
|>>> II hard drive, and it runs fine. In disk manger, I resized the C
|>>> partition to 200 Gb and made a second D partition using the rest of
|>>> the space. I took all the defaults that disk manger gave me for the D
|>>> partition during this process.
|>>>
|>>> When I do a scan disk of the C drive, either 465Gb or when 200 Gb it
|>>> finishes successfully and boots into Vista. When I do a scan disk of
|>>> the D drive, which VISTA wants to do while rebooting, it finishes
|>>> successfully and then I get a blue screen crash. I then power of the
|>>> computer, VISTA comes up, and everything is fine.
|>>>
|>>> The end result is that I will live with a 465 Gb C partition for now.
|>>> Has anyone heard of this problem or know why it happens?
|>>>
|>>> I tried the repartitioning with Acronis Disk Suite and the same thing
|>>> happened. Although, it is interesting, that Acronis will run the scan
|>>> disk of the D partition in VISTA without rebooting, and when it is
|>>> done the computer does NOT crash.
|>>
|>>
|>> My 500-gig Samsung SATA is all in one partition, and contains 465 gigs,
|>> the same as yours.
|>
|>

 

[Michael Palumbo]

My 500-gig Samsung SATA is all in one partition, and contains 465 gigs,
the same as yours.

That wasn't his question. He was asking about the blue screen with the
added partition.

I don't experience this (gave it a try) so, sadly, I have no suggestions.

Mic

 

[Hugh Wyn Griffith]

My 500-gig Samsung SATA is all in one partition, and contains 465 gigs, 
the same as yours.

Isn't this the classic situation of marketing GBs and technical GBs?

 

[zoner]

This is Andy (original poster). I'll try to answer Jim and Darrell in
this one response.

The Computer is new. I just rebuilt most of it about 4 weeks ago.
Onboard SATA controller that supports 6x SATA II devices. From
motherboard manual (ABIT AB9 QUAD GT) IntelICH8R - Intel Matrix
Storage Tech. There is also 2 external eSATA but I am not using those
at the moment.

All hard drives are SATA II.

I think for now I will live with one C drive until time allows because
it takes so long to test it and run scan disk on the C and then the D
partitions. I didn't try a full format so maybe that would do it.

 

[Guest]

No this thread isn't. Because it is about a blue screen crash. And yes the
difference appears to be due to 10^3 (1000) not quite as much as 2^10
(1024). But the technical unit for 2^10 is ki, Mi, or Gi. Note kilo is lower
case so I suppose ki is too.

 

[Adam Albright]

Isn't this the classic situation of marketing GBs and technical GBs?

Sure sounds like it. I got a 750 GB Seagate drive (how it is marketed
and what it says on the box) while Windows Explorer sees it as a 698
GB drive with a capacity of 750,153,728,000 bytes. Silly number games
that actually make sense, sort of, if you do the math. Most people to
make it easy round down. So while a kilobyte has 1,024 bytes a KB is
often expressed as just 1K or a 1,000.

for more:

http://familyinternet.about.com/cs/computinghelp/l/aa052401a.htm

 

[zoner]

I forgot to answer the question about running scan disk. I was copying
5 year old cdr's that have photo images on them to the D partition. I
was using a Samsung SATA DVD/CD writer and at times Windows Explorer
would just hang and that new circle would keep on spinning but no
error msg. I think I had to kill it a few times. I ended up copying
the files on another machine and then copying to this D partition over
my network. I did the scan disk to make sure nothing was messed up.
Scan disk didn't find any errors but then I got the blue screen.

Here are the messages from the blue screen:
wdf01000.sys
Page_Fault_In_Nonpaged_Area
STOP: 0X00000050
wdf01000.sys - address 80502D26 base at 804CF000, datestamp 4549b23a

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

I was just told by MS Tech support for VISTA that they are told that
MS does not support disk related problems with VISTA when it is
installed on SATA hard drives. Just EIDE.

I have a major problem with that. Just about any IDE-bound systems
will be "too old" to be sure of Vistra campatibility, and we've been
building S-ATA systems for well over a year already... IDE HD's are,
in the context of new PCs, yesterday's trash.

Most modern motherboards push S-ATA (4 or 6 sockets) over IDE (only
one channel, requiring Master+Slave and it's only recently that
optical drives have moved from IDE to S-ATA. So "just" build a new PC
with an IDE HD usually means sharing the channel with the optical
drive, and that really limites your expansion options too.

Are you sure it wasn't "we don't support Vista installed to S-ATA HDs
that are connected to add-on S-ATA cards"? That policy would make
more sense, but built-in S-ATA is prevelent on new motherboards and
should be supported as native devices by the OS.

Else you're building a new OS that needs new hardware (spec
requirements) but won't work with new hardware. That's nuts.

The reason this even came up is I installed Vista on a 500 Gb WD SATA
II hard drive, and it runs fine. In disk manger, I resized the C
partition to 200 Gb and made a second D partition using the rest of
the space. I took all the defaults that disk manger gave me for the D
partition during this process.

When I do a scan disk of the C drive, either 465Gb or when 200 Gb it
finishes successfully and boots into Vista. When I do a scan disk of
the D drive, which VISTA wants to do while rebooting, it finishes
successfully and then I get a blue screen crash. I then power of the
computer, VISTA comes up, and everything is fine.

The end result is that I will live with a 465 Gb C partition for now.
Has anyone heard of this problem or know why it happens?

No. Does not look like an acceptable result... have you checked
hardware? Check:
- motherboard capacitors
- RAM via MemTest86
- physical HD via HD Tune (www.hdtune.com) - needs admin rights

I tried the repartitioning with Acronis Disk Suite and the same thing
happened. Although, it is interesting, that Acronis will run the scan
disk of the D partition in VISTA without rebooting, and when it is
done the computer does NOT crash.

I use BING for partitioning, but without installing it.

--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -

Tech Support: The guys who follow the
'Parade of New Products' with a shovel.

 

[Adam Albright]

I have a major problem with that. Just about any IDE-bound systems
will be "too old" to be sure of Vistra campatibility, and we've been
building S-ATA systems for well over a year already... IDE HD's are,
in the context of new PCs, yesterday's trash.

That's a foolish assumption. Today, most DVD burners require a IDE
channel to run on. In many areas SATA models are hard to come by, yet.
You don't built a system without a DVD drive do ya? For example I
visited my local Fry's super store and it is really, with in excess of
100,000 square feet floor space, they had ZERO SATA DVD drives, but
about 30 external and interal ones running IDE or USB, even a firewire
model or two. I fonnd a few on the web, always out of stock.

Most modern motherboards push S-ATA (4 or 6 sockets) over IDE (only
one channel, requiring Master+Slave and it's only recently that
optical drives have moved from IDE to S-ATA.

They haven't moved in mass yet. That's the point.

So "just" build a new PC
with an IDE HD usually means sharing the channel with the optical
drive, and that really limites your expansion options too.

Really? Why? I have my boot drive on master and my DVD burner on
slave. Works great and is super fast.

Are you sure it wasn't "we don't support Vista installed to S-ATA HDs
that are connected to add-on S-ATA cards"? That policy would make
more sense, but built-in S-ATA is prevelent on new motherboards and
should be supported as native devices by the OS.

Hint: While build-in to many motherboards the controllers can be buggy
as hell in that either the MB or Vista or the BIOS has trouble with
them or any of that combination. Haven't you read my rants on this
very topic? I got a state of the art very expensive Gigabyte GA965PDQ6
board that "earned" Vista certification with one IDE channel and 8
SATA slots and even with the latest BIOS upgrade, plus a upgrade of
the chipset, plus the latest Intel controller upgrade for the South
Bridge ICH8R chip that controls 6 of the Sata drive channels none of
my many SATA drives are seen correctly by Vista no matter what I do in
BIOS and they aren't either if plugged into the second Gigabyte
onboard controller. My guess is my revision 1 board simply can't
handle it correctly and/or something goofy with Vista.

While I could get some third party SATA controller card, again the
same story. NONE say they come with Vista drivers, except I think it
was a Promise card, and again, that was out of stock and not worth the
$200+ just to replace was is hardwired into the MB. I'm still fuming
over the fact the board "passed" Vista certification and claims to
fully support SATA. IT DOES NOT! Not under Vista, and marginally under
XP.

WAY TOO MANY people here jump to the conclusion that hey it works for
me, so if it don't work for you, then you must be nuts. There simply
are too many variables for everything to have shaken out yet. Also
I've seen my same problem reported over and over again in various
forums all up and down the web. So before some guy says I must have it
misconfigured, no, I do not.

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

That's a foolish assumption. Today, most DVD burners require a IDE
channel to run on. In many areas SATA models are hard to come by, yet.

I think you mis-read me; I rather carefully said "IDE HD's are, in the
context of new PCs, yesterday's trash" rather than "IDE drives are, in
the context of new PCs, yesterday's trash" for that reason ;-)

In fact, being obliged to consume the sole IDE interface for the
optical drive is a good reason to avoid IDE HDs, as ithe IDE HD would
have to share the same channel. With multiple optical and hard
drives, this becomes even more of a no-no.

So, we're saying the same thing, really.

What annoys me MASSIVELY is that even new S-ATA optical drives are
still shipping with a Nero Express 6 that will not install on Vista,
and there's NOTHING on either Nero's site (which just pretends OEM
Nero doesn't exist) nor Samsung's site (which just offers and even
older version of Nero Express 6 as "update") help.

Really? Why? I have my boot drive on master and my DVD burner on
slave. Works great and is super fast.

With an IDE HD as Master and IDE DVD writer as Slave, you have no way
to attach any additional IDE devices, such as an IDE HD that you wish
to recover data from, for example. Removing the DVD doesn't help if
your recovery software boots off CDR, and removing the main HD doesn't
help if you intended to use that as the recovery destination.

There may also be performance issues when the source and destination
drives are on the same channel, when burning optical disks.

Hint: While build-in to many motherboards the controllers can be buggy
as hell in that either the MB or Vista or the BIOS has trouble with
them or any of that combination. Haven't you read my rants on this

I've read several threads where the motherboard chipset lacks native
S-ATA and an additional chipset is added for this, or where there are
both native and added S-ATA controllers on the same motherboard.

That's an internalization of the problems one has of added S-ATA
cards. I was thinking of motherboard chipsets that natively support
S-ATA; MS really have no excuse not to support that.

I got a state of the art very expensive Gigabyte GA965PDQ6
board that "earned" Vista certification with one IDE channel and 8
SATA slots and even with the latest BIOS upgrade, plus a upgrade of
the chipset, plus the latest Intel controller upgrade for the South
Bridge ICH8R chip that controls 6 of the Sata drive channels none of
my many SATA drives are seen correctly by Vista no matter what I do in
BIOS and they aren't either if plugged into the second Gigabyte
onboard controller. My guess is my revision 1 board simply can't
handle it correctly and/or something goofy with Vista.

That's Intel P965 chipset, which should be similar mileage to the G965
chipset mobos I've been using for my Vista32 PC builds.

I've had no trouble using S-ATA HD with those. For my reference
build, I downloaded Vista drivers from Intel and applied those, and
since then I've used ImageX from WinPE 2.0 for subsequent builds.

OTOH, 8 x S-ATA sounds like there may be another controller in there
somewhere (though the details on your mobo I read didn't mention
this). I say that, because none of the G965 motherboards I've used -
namely Whitchester with RAID (6 x S-ATA) nor Roger City without RAID
(4 x S-ATA) have 8 S-ATA sockets.

I'm still fuming over the fact the board "passed" Vista certification and
claims to fully support SATA. IT DOES NOT! Not under Vista, and
marginally under XP.

I'd be fuming too! What do Gigabyte say about this? Have you tried a
swap-out, in case it's a duff board?

WAY TOO MANY people here jump to the conclusion that hey it works for
me, so if it don't work for you, then you must be nuts.

Sure, that's always an issue.

FWIW, the two Intel motherboards I mentioned, plus the 946G chipset
Islington, have worked fine with Vista32 RTM Home Basic and Intel's
drivers (the ones on the bundled CD being too old for Vista).

As it's not working for you as it does for me, my reaction is not
"you're wrong" but "what is it that differs betwen what you use and
do, and what I use and do, that accounts for our different mileage?"

I've seen my same problem reported over and over again in various
forums all up and down the web. So before some guy says I must have it
misconfigured, no, I do not.

The ones I've seen have been about additional S-ATA controllers (i.e.
other than the native chipset support) - and thar be dragons...

--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -

Tech Support: The guys who follow the
'Parade of New Products' with a shovel.

 

[Hugh Wyn Griffith]

Sure sounds like it.

Although the ratio of his figures works out as 1.075 ..... :1

But then there's hidden partitions beloved of system builders.....

 

[Adam Albright]

OTOH, 8 x S-ATA sounds like there may be another controller in there
somewhere (though the details on your mobo I read didn't mention
this). I say that, because none of the G965 motherboards I've used -
namely Whitchester with RAID (6 x S-ATA) nor Roger City without RAID
(4 x S-ATA) have 8 S-ATA sockets.

Yep, six on the South Bridge ICH8R and the other two on a Gigabyte
controller chip which also does double duty supporting the IDE
channel, to keep things straight they color code the connectors orange
and purple.

I'd be fuming too! What do Gigabyte say about this? Have you tried a
swap-out, in case it's a duff board?

Still waiting for a reply to my email, still nothing back in about 3
weeks. Thanks for reminding me, only trouble is it was through a web
based server that I wrote the email, I got to remember where or even
if I copied the message to my drive somewhere.

Sure, that's always an issue.

I asked at Fry's where I bought the board and well, that was a waste
of time. I was hoping they would swap boards and maybe I'd get a later
revision of the board which I think may be the problem, but they
didn't have any more in stock. Overall it is a nice board, the drives
work set up as IDE from the SATA channels, just that they are a good
deal slower that way. :-(

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

Yep, six on the South Bridge ICH8R and the other two on a Gigabyte
controller chip which also does double duty supporting the IDE
channel, to keep things straight they color code the connectors orange
and purple.

Ah, there you go; that fits the issues I've seen perfectly!

Does it make a difference whether you use the built-in S-ATA or the
additional 2 S-ATA? You may have to do a completely clean build to
test these in ways that don't complicate each other.

Still waiting for a reply to my email, still nothing back in about 3
weeks. Thanks for reminding me, only trouble is it was through a web
based server that I wrote the email, I got to remember where or even
if I copied the message to my drive somewhere.

I was pleasently surprised when Jetway responded to my email when
their 875P chipset super-board (also with an added S-ATA/RAID/IDE,
this time from Promise) blew up on XP SP2 due to this...

http://cquirke.mvps.org/sp2intel.htm

....which was written right in the middle of that crisis. They rev'd
their BIOS to fix the issue a few days later.

I asked at Fry's where I bought the board and well, that was a waste
of time. I was hoping they would swap boards and maybe I'd get a later
revision of the board which I think may be the problem, but they
didn't have any more in stock.

I'd try and negotiate a swap for a different board, e.g. a Whitchester
(tho you'd lose 2 x S-ATA, it's still RAIDable). Let them margin up
on a more expensive board if it sweetens the deal for them, but they
may have a cut-off time for such swaps, so do it soon.

If you can get to their tech back-end, that may help, especially if
you document everything well, and concicely, as I think you probably
will. St some point, some employee has to take the decision to help
you. which also means having to defend that decision to management;
your documentation can make it easier for them to do that.

Overall it is a nice board, the drives work set up as IDE from the
SATA channels, just that they are a good deal slower that way. :-(

Hmm. Not sure where the "live with it" / "swap it" break-even may be.

------------------------------------ ---- --- -- - - - -

"For every complex question, there's a simple
answer - and it's wrong." H.L. Mencken

 

[Frank]

After reading this I wonder what I shall do as I have just ordered a new
computer with a Gigabyte GA 965-DS3 Mobo and 2 WD 8 M Sata hard disk, any
advise would be appreciated

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

After reading this I wonder what I shall do as I have just ordered a new
computer with a Gigabyte GA 965-DS3 Mobo and 2 WD 8 M Sata hard disk, any
advise would be appreciated

If it comes with Vista installed, you should be OK, in that the
builder must have sorted most of the problems mentioned on this.

If you planned on doing your own Vista setup (especially if the system
arrives with XP installed), then I'd be Very Careful.

I'd be particularly careful about swapping the HD to other S-ATA
connectors (Vista's product activation may stab you in the back, as it
seems more trigger-happy than XP) and especially from one of the
"native" S-ATA to one of the "value-added" S-ATA.

The problem is that the motherboard we've been discussing, has both
the 965 chipset's native S-ATA, plus extra S-ATA and IDE from an
additional 3rd-party chipset that Gigabyte added to the board.

 

[Guest]

One bit I'd like to add if you've got a mix of ide and sata drives and plan
to install windws power down and disconnect all hd's except for the one you
want to install windows to. If you have a mix of ide and sata drives hooked
up when you install windows it will place system files onto the ide drive
regardless if it's the drive windows is going on to or not. This will save
you a lot of heartache later on down the road otherwise when you remove or
disconnect the ide and try to boot it will not find the ntlr file and halt.