S-ATA problem

[Engelkott]

Hi!

After years owning Abut boards i took a leap into the unknown and
bought an Asus P5GD1 board.

The problem i have is nto so much a problem but an annoyance in that
my two S-ATA drives are only being used in mode 5 (ATA-100) instead of
the mode they are capible of, which is mode 6 (ATA-133)!

My two P-ATA drives are working happily in mode 6 so i can't for the
life of me figure out what is up with the board. I checked the Asus
site, got the new bios but still no luck.

Any advice relevant to the subject would be apprechiated!

Engelkott

 

[Roger Hamlett]

Hi!

After years owning Abut boards i took a leap into the unknown and
bought an Asus P5GD1 board.

The problem i have is nto so much a problem but an annoyance in that
my two S-ATA drives are only being used in mode 5 (ATA-100) instead of
the mode they are capible of, which is mode 6 (ATA-133)!

My two P-ATA drives are working happily in mode 6 so i can't for the
life of me figure out what is up with the board. I checked the Asus
site, got the new bios but still no luck.

Any advice relevant to the subject would be apprechiated!

Engelkott

Why worry?.
There is no practical difference between the speeds. Your drives will only
be capable of a maximum transfer of perhaps 75-80MB/sec from the media,
and even from the buffer memory, for a few uSec, most drives strain to
keep up even with the 100MB/sec rate. The faster interface makes no
measurable difference at all to the system performance...
The 'odds' are though that it is your drives. For instance, Samsung
drives, though supporting ATA133, _ship_ set to use ATA100, as the fastest
mode, because a lot of motherboards have problems with the higher rate.
Several other manufacturers do the same, and offer a 'tool' to switch the
drives up, usually with a large caveat, that you should backup your data
first.

Best Wishes

 

[Paul]

Why worry?.
There is no practical difference between the speeds. Your drives will only
be capable of a maximum transfer of perhaps 75-80MB/sec from the media,
and even from the buffer memory, for a few uSec, most drives strain to
keep up even with the 100MB/sec rate. The faster interface makes no
measurable difference at all to the system performance...
The 'odds' are though that it is your drives. For instance, Samsung
drives, though supporting ATA133, _ship_ set to use ATA100, as the fastest
mode, because a lot of motherboards have problems with the higher rate.
Several other manufacturers do the same, and offer a 'tool' to switch the
drives up, usually with a large caveat, that you should backup your data
first.

Best Wishes

And to further worry Engelkatt, the P5GD1 uses ICH6R. From the
datasheet, it says for the PATA interfaces:

The ICH6 supports Ultra ATA/100/66/33 bus mastering protocol,
providing support for a variety of transfer speeds with IDE
devices. Ultra ATA/33 provides transfers up to 33 MB/s,
Ultra ATA/66 provides transfers at up to 44 MB/s or 66 MB/s,
and Ultra ATA/100 can achieve read transfer rates up to
100 MB/s and write transfer rates up to 88.9 MB/s.

So the PATA drive cannot be in mode 6, if the hardware doesn't
run that fast.

Now, for the SATA interfaces, the datasheet for the ICH6R says:

Note: SATA interface transfer rates are independent of UDMA
mode settings. SATA interface transfer rates will operate at
the bus¹s maximum speed, regardless of the UDMA mode reported
by the SATA device or the system BIOS.

which is some good news. At least in the Southbridge itself, the
reported mode will not be a limitation. I don't know how the
disk end works though - hard drives can be bridged or native
mode, and that would be a potential limitation at the
hard drive end of things.

The full datasheet is here (747 pages):

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/datashts/301473.htm

This one details the difference between "Enhanced" and
"Compatible". This document is for ICH5, but the same
concepts apply to the slightly different set of interfaces
on the ICH6 or ICH6R.

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/manuals/252671.htm

The best way to test this, would be some benchmarks, rather
than relying on the reported mode setting. Using a tool
such as the Hitachi Feature Tool, may allow inspection
of the drive internal settings.

If the manufacturer of your drive, does not provide tools
to inspect the internal settings of the drive, you can try
this - the Hitachi "Feature Tool (v1.99)". The link
and manual are here:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/ftool_user_guide_199.pdf

HTH,
Paul

 

[Engelkott]

And to further worry Engelkatt, the P5GD1 uses ICH6R. From the
datasheet, it says for the PATA interfaces:

The ICH6 supports Ultra ATA/100/66/33 bus mastering protocol,
providing support for a variety of transfer speeds with IDE
devices. Ultra ATA/33 provides transfers up to 33 MB/s,
Ultra ATA/66 provides transfers at up to 44 MB/s or 66 MB/s,
and Ultra ATA/100 can achieve read transfer rates up to
100 MB/s and write transfer rates up to 88.9 MB/s.

So the PATA drive cannot be in mode 6, if the hardware doesn't
run that fast.

Now, for the SATA interfaces, the datasheet for the ICH6R says:

Note: SATA interface transfer rates are independent of UDMA
mode settings. SATA interface transfer rates will operate at
the bus¹s maximum speed, regardless of the UDMA mode reported
by the SATA device or the system BIOS.

which is some good news. At least in the Southbridge itself, the
reported mode will not be a limitation. I don't know how the
disk end works though - hard drives can be bridged or native
mode, and that would be a potential limitation at the
hard drive end of things.

The full datasheet is here (747 pages):

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/datashts/301473.htm

This one details the difference between "Enhanced" and
"Compatible". This document is for ICH5, but the same
concepts apply to the slightly different set of interfaces
on the ICH6 or ICH6R.

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/manuals/252671.htm

The best way to test this, would be some benchmarks, rather
than relying on the reported mode setting. Using a tool
such as the Hitachi Feature Tool, may allow inspection
of the drive internal settings.

If the manufacturer of your drive, does not provide tools
to inspect the internal settings of the drive, you can try
this - the Hitachi "Feature Tool (v1.99)". The link
and manual are here:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/ftool_user_guide_199.pdf

HTH,
Paul

Thanks for the feedback, however accodring to the Asus website my
board does support UDMA-133!

http://uk.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=24&model=163&modelmenu=1

Everest reports my P-ATA drives internal settings as well as all the
other SMART reporting functions and it reports the they are running
actively in DMA mode 6 but the active mode for SATA drives are 5.

Engelkott