IDE drive problems on P4C800

[Lorenzo Sandini]

Hi,

Having nothing important on my drives, I moved a 60GB ATA133 and a 160GB
ATA133 drives from an Intel 845GERG2 motherboard to a P4C800.

No wonder windows would not boot (but the windows install on the drives that
I moved from the P4C800 to the intel mobo booted just fine).

So I did a clean winxp install on the master 60GB drive, with the 160GB
drive as slave for storage, only to be disappointed with the performance of
both IDE drives. DMA is enabled on both channels of the controller, for
master and slave. Moreover, I could not benchmark the 60GB drive either with
HDTach or Sandra, boh hang with CPU errors (?!). Benchmarking the slave
160GB drive works fine, but sustained drive speed is 30 MB/s...

I moved the drives from the blue connector to the black connector and aaaah,
performance is mucho better, 60GB is still unbenchmarkable (whoa, a new
word), and the slave drive works like it should, ATA100 at least.

I installed intel's INF file correctly, I have no idea why the drives behave
this way. Any suggestion ?

Lorenzo

 

[Homer]

Did you install the ide driver off the CD?

Homer

 

[Paul]

Hi,

Having nothing important on my drives, I moved a 60GB ATA133 and a 160GB
ATA133 drives from an Intel 845GERG2 motherboard to a P4C800.

No wonder windows would not boot (but the windows install on the drives that
I moved from the P4C800 to the intel mobo booted just fine).

So I did a clean winxp install on the master 60GB drive, with the 160GB
drive as slave for storage, only to be disappointed with the performance of
both IDE drives. DMA is enabled on both channels of the controller, for
master and slave. Moreover, I could not benchmark the 60GB drive either with
HDTach or Sandra, boh hang with CPU errors (?!). Benchmarking the slave
160GB drive works fine, but sustained drive speed is 30 MB/s...

I moved the drives from the blue connector to the black connector and aaaah,
performance is mucho better, 60GB is still unbenchmarkable (whoa, a new
word), and the slave drive works like it should, ATA100 at least.

I installed intel's INF file correctly, I have no idea why the drives behave
this way. Any suggestion ?

Lorenzo

Your BIOS is set incorrectly. When using Enhanced mode, there is only
one "valid" setting for the "Enhanced mode support on" setting.
It should be set to [S-ATA], even if that is counter-intuitive.
There have been reports, that using the other two settings, causes
rates slower than ATA100 to be used for IDE drives. So, follow
the advice in the user manual, in the section "Required IDE
Configuration Settings in BIOS", and use the [S-ATA] setting.

It does sound though, like your 60GB drive is not happy. I
don't know whether the BIOS setting will make it work or
not.

Paul

 

[Lorenzo Sandini]

Thank you for your suggestion, I had set it to [P-ATA], I'll try [S-ATA]
next week-end.

Lorenzo

Hi,

Having nothing important on my drives, I moved a 60GB ATA133 and a 160GB
ATA133 drives from an Intel 845GERG2 motherboard to a P4C800.

No wonder windows would not boot (but the windows install on the drives
that
I moved from the P4C800 to the intel mobo booted just fine).

So I did a clean winxp install on the master 60GB drive, with the 160GB
drive as slave for storage, only to be disappointed with the performance
of
both IDE drives. DMA is enabled on both channels of the controller, for
master and slave. Moreover, I could not benchmark the 60GB drive either
with
HDTach or Sandra, boh hang with CPU errors (?!). Benchmarking the slave
160GB drive works fine, but sustained drive speed is 30 MB/s...

I moved the drives from the blue connector to the black connector and
aaaah,
performance is mucho better, 60GB is still unbenchmarkable (whoa, a new
word), and the slave drive works like it should, ATA100 at least.

I installed intel's INF file correctly, I have no idea why the drives
behave
this way. Any suggestion ?

Lorenzo

Your BIOS is set incorrectly. When using Enhanced mode, there is only
one "valid" setting for the "Enhanced mode support on" setting.
It should be set to [S-ATA], even if that is counter-intuitive.
There have been reports, that using the other two settings, causes
rates slower than ATA100 to be used for IDE drives. So, follow
the advice in the user manual, in the section "Required IDE
Configuration Settings in BIOS", and use the [S-ATA] setting.

It does sound though, like your 60GB drive is not happy. I
don't know whether the BIOS setting will make it work or
not.

Paul