A8V Deluxe, WinXP x64, 64 bit Promise Driver and SATA-2 question

[Dale Frameli]

If I install WinXP x64 and the latest promise 64bit drivers onto my A8V
Deluxe, will I be able to use any of the newer, and much larger, 2nd
generation SATA hard drives with my system?

Thanks in advance,
Dale

 

[NoNoBadDog!]

If I install WinXP x64 and the latest promise 64bit drivers onto my A8V
Deluxe, will I be able to use any of the newer, and much larger, 2nd
generation SATA hard drives with my system?

Thanks in advance,
Dale

If you are talking about SATAII, then no. Your motherboard SATA controller
must support SATA II. You can buy a PCI card that will add SATAII to your
existing motherboard, although I can think of very little reason for the
average user to do so. Games are designed with the original SATA specs, so
SATAII will not improve gaming performance, and as a casual user I cannot
see anyone having databases or other files large enough that are accessed
frequently enough to justify SATAII. In short, SATA is more than sufficient
for 99% of the casual users needs, and will be for a long time.

You can buy and install the SATAII drives, and your system will see the full
capacity, but will only operate at SATA (150Gbs/burst) speeds.

You might consider looking at NCQ technology, as it delivers consistently
faster performance (SATA will still beat it in "burst" mode). NCQ allows
data to be read out of sequence from the drive and then delivered to the
buffer is the proper sequence; result is less thrashing and greater
sustained throughput.

Again, your chipset must support NCQ, and as your motherboard currently does
not, you'll have to add a PCI card to support it.

Bobby

 

[DaveW]

No. You would need to download a motherboard BIOS update, IF there is such
a one, that converts your SATA controller on the motherboard to SATA II.
Then you would need to download and install the necessary SATA II drivers.

 

[Dale Frameli]

Bobby,

I have is a pair of 300GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10 SATA-150 hard drives.
These drives do support NCQ.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=100719&affiliate=pricegrabber

I bought them for use with a different system (an A8N-SLI) but never could
get them to work properly.

I was hoping they might work with this A8V Deluxe system I'm building.

I don't see why the manufacturers wouldn't make these darn things
backwardly compatible!!!

If these hard drives won't work with the onboard controllers, can you
recommend a RAID capable PCI card?

Thanks Again,
Dale

 

[NoNoBadDog!]

Dale;


Your drives are first Gen SATA 150 drives; SATA II is 300Mbps and NCQ
depends on what kind of motherboard you have (NCQ will be faster on an AMD
system with Hypertransport than on an Intel system that still uses a
northbridge). As stated, if your motherboard does not have an onboard NCQ
controller, you will need to buy a PCI card to get the advantage of NCQ. I
would first check and see if Maxtor offers one, but otherwise I would just
visit my local CompUSA or other computer store and see what NCQ PCI cards
they have in stock. One last thing, a minor consideration that may or may
not apply in your case...If you go with a PCI card, make sure you put it in
a bus master capable PCI slot, as you must be able to boot from it. With
you mobo, I think all the PCI slots are Bus master slots, so it should be no
problem; I would check the manual just to be sure.

Good luck and post back with your progress...

One closing thought...when I build a system for either myself or a client, I
always use Seagate hard drives. They are by far the quietest, coolest and
most reliable drives I have ever used. All of their internal drives come
with a 5 year warranty, and they will be first to market with a new
perpendicular recording drive. I have a little cash put aside to try one of
those when I can get one....

Bobby

 

[Paul]

I don't see why the manufacturers wouldn't make these darn things
backwardly compatible!!!

Notice the approach that Hitachi/IBM is taking with their drives
in the following document. The drives ship operating at 1.5Gbits/sec
on the link, requiring the user to manually set the drive to
3.0Gbits/sec. This is to prevent situations where you cannot
communicate from a 1.5Gbit/sec motherboard to a 3.0Gbit/sec
drive. If you flip this control to the 3Gbit/sec setting while
the drive is connected to a 1.5Gbit/sec motherboard, then you
must find a 3.0Gbit/sec motherboard in order to reestablish
communication with it, and use the Feature Tool to flip it back.

See PDF page 22:
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/ftool_user_guide_197.pdf

That covers the disk end - I don't know what controls the
motherboard end of things has, and whether discovery is totally
automatic. You would hope a 3.0Gbit/sec motherboard, would try
both 3.0Gbit/sec and then fall back to 1.5Gbit/sec, until it
gets good CRC on the link.

Paul