SATA-II explained

smids · 25 Aug 2006 at 09:10

@Fatfish: Sorry for the lack of response to your question! You edited your post so I didn't get any notification!

. Some motherboards out for the Core2 Duo range are really in their infancy and so you can expect them to be buggy. BIOS releases should fix this. The Intel chipset boards use the Intel SATA controller which is on the chipset and so you can expect certain issues until a mature BIOS is out. When the Intel SATA controller works, it's a very good controller and better than most third party onboard controllers. Only dedicated cards can beat it really.

@Dave: Yes, the hard drive will work. Make sure you set it for backwards compatibility though i.e. set 150MB/s transfer rate. For hitachi's: they are defaulted to 150MB/s in firmware - no changes required. Seagate: comes with a jumper on the hard drive which is set to 150MB/s (the 7200.10's). Maxtor and WD - not sure on these but I believe they are jumper settings, in which case just make sure that the drive is correctly set to 150MB/s before installing.

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phillai · 4 Sep 2006 at 19:17

Can anyone help me out here?

I've got two Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 SATA 500 GB drives (in use now) which are currently in SATA1 (SATA150) mode as my old mobo only supports upto this..

If I use the feature tool to make this SATA-II (SATA300) and get my drives ready for my new ASUS P5W DH Deluxe mobo as it supports SATA300, will I lose all my data that are on my drives now?

Thanks in advance to those that can help me!

smids · 4 Sep 2006 at 20:01

I didn't. I installed windows before making the switch and it made no difference whatsoever to the data on my disk. It's only an external transfer rate change, and not something which changes the way things are written/read from the disk.

phillai · 4 Sep 2006 at 20:08

smids, you're a star... Thanks a lot!

smsmasters · 12 Sep 2006 at 20:58

I'm getting the Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 this Thursday and was wondering, do I just enable SATA II mode via the feature tool or are there any other settings I need to enable?

Enable or disable the read-ahead or write cache.
Change the drive Automatic Acoustic Management settings to the:
Lowest acoustic emanation setting (Quiet Seek Mode), or
Maximum performance level (Normal Seek Mode).
Change the predefined capacity of the drive. This option can be used in situations where there is a BIOS limitation and the drive is not recognized. See the Users Guide for specific details.
Switch the Ultra DMA mode
Change Advanced Power Mode - allows you to change between the lowest power consumption and the highest power consumption (maximum performance level).
Show Drive Temperature - shows the current drive temperature in Celsius and Fahrenheit.
Configure SATA interface - adjust maximum speed and enable/disable Spread Spectrum Clocking.

Warning!: Switching your drive to support 3.0Gb/s, or enabling spread spectrum clocking and then using it, may render your drive unusable in a system that can't support these functions. If in doubt, please contact your system manufacturer.

Basically, is the drive already set to its maximum performance, except that it's defaulted to SATAI mode? I just enable SATAII mode and that's it right?

I have an ASUS P5WD2 Premium mobo by the way, currently have one 300gb SATA II drive running.

smids · 12 Sep 2006 at 21:19

Only SATA 3.0Gbp/s needs enabling - everything else is already running

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smsmasters · 12 Sep 2006 at 21:29

smids said:
Only SATA 3.0Gbp/s needs enabling - everything else is already running .

Cheers.

Can't wait for it to arrive.

smsmasters · 14 Sep 2006 at 12:15

smids said:
Only SATA 3.0Gbp/s needs enabling - everything else is already running .

Ok, it arrived. I set it to SATA 3GB mode and disabled "spread spectrum clocking". What exactly is this? Is it better if it's enabled or not? :confused:

smids · 14 Sep 2006 at 12:44

smsmasters said:
Ok, it arrived. I set it to SATA 3GB mode and disabled "spread spectrum clocking". What exactly is this? Is it better if it's enabled or not?

Don't worry about spread spectrum - it's to do with interference (radio/EM etc) just ignore it and leave it disabled.

smsmasters · 17 Sep 2006 at 12:58

Thanks for the help.

Ta!

Gamergod · 13 Oct 2006 at 21:00

I have a 939SLI-eSATA2 which of course has SATA II. Can you tell me if it supports NCQ?

smids · 13 Oct 2006 at 21:35

Gamergod said:
I have a 939SLI-eSATA2 which of course has SATA II. Can you tell me if it supports NCQ?

http://www.uli.com.tw/eng/products/product_detail.php?pserno=92

It would seem so if you use the ULi ports.

Trilogy · 15 Oct 2006 at 21:22

thanks man great guide

smids · 15 Oct 2006 at 22:04

Thanks

. As I said in the first post, please add questions/comments for amendment etc.

xsnv · 20 Nov 2006 at 11:24

Really good post, answered most of my questions except 1:

You're basically saying there's no performace difference at all between sata 1 and sata 2. I'm looking at the tasty £30 dfi on ocuk this week only and was wondering:

Will I notice any performance hit running my shiny new 320gb 7200.10 sata2 hd in sata1 mode on the mobo (it only suppourts sata1) ?

Cheers.

smids · 20 Nov 2006 at 18:52

xsnv said:
Really good post, answered most of my questions except 1:

You're basically saying there's no performace difference at all between sata 1 and sata 2. I'm looking at the tasty £30 dfi on ocuk this week only and was wondering:

Will I notice any performance hit running my shiny new 320gb 7200.10 sata2 hd in sata1 mode on the mobo (it only suppourts sata1) ?

Cheers.

No - the only [minor] performance hit will be from the 150MB/s burst. This is the cached read from the HDU buffer, it can 'only' go at 150MB/s rather than 300MB/s (actually figures are usually about 150MB/s for sata1 and 260Mb/s for sata-II). Not exactly much of a difference. Certainly it would not show in ANY real world situation.

carbon8ed · 27 Nov 2006 at 11:27

FAO Smids

Thanks for the guide - excellent, I liked this bit: "I do actually have 4 x 80GB Deskstars in a RAID0+1 - RAID0 array of 2 drives mirrored to another RAID0 array of 2 drives. Thus I have 160GB of extremely fast, very reliable data and no longer need to worry about drive failures on my windows install which can even be used to storage. This is what I suggest - RAID0 is fast enough on its own with 2 drives, let alone more, but this way you have redundancy."

I have the ASUS A8N SLi Premium with NVraid and SIL 3114 on board. The NVraid is running 2 x of 250 GB’s and 2 x 320GB disks as JBOD, the SIL 3114 controller will ONLY let me run RAID.

I have just ordered 4 x 80 GB SATA drives for the SIL3114 RAID.

Questions, how do I set up a pair of RAID O’s (ie 2 RAID 0 pairs and then mirror them as RAID 1?

Can I slipstream the SIL drivers into XP?, would that negate the need to hit F6?, the only SIL3114 drivers I find are for the cards – but I guess they would be the same chips as on the motherboard?

Apologies for the noob questions, I have used a RAID 0 and RAID 1 on the SIL3114 with a pair of Maxtor’s (sorry – am on 5th replacement), but not RAID 0+1, and I think 0+1 is better use of drives than RAID5. Grateful for any help.

Carbon8ed :confused:

smids · 28 Nov 2006 at 18:20

Hey carbon8ed - I've not used RAID0+1 on the SiI3114 controller, though I'd be very surprised if it didn't support it. It is no different to setup from any other RAID in that you'd simply select 'RAID0+1 or 'mirrored stripe' or it might even be called 'RAID10' (though this is wrong). You cannot simply set up a RAID0 and then RAID1 that - it sets it up as a RAID0+1 from the off. Your best bet is the Silicon image manual for that controller because, as I say, I have no experience.You probably can slipstream the drivers - no doubt nLite will be required for that, or you could simply do an F6 install (much easier in my opinion, especially if you have a floppy drive).

Personally, I'd use the nV controller for the RAID0+1 and use contancenation (or someting similar) and this is basically JBOD and you can use a single SATA drive for this. That's a personal thing though as I really enjoy the functions of the nVRAID.

Stelly · 5 Dec 2006 at 11:16

Can anyone explain eSata to me please?

Stelly

smids · 5 Dec 2006 at 18:22

Stelly said:
Can anyone explain eSata to me please?

Stelly

Hmm, that is something I really should get added isn't it?

eSATA is just an external SATA port BUT it uses a DIFFERENT plug to normal SATA. Also, eSATA cables are usually more electrically/magnetically shielded.

They run at 150 or 300Mb/s speeds as a normal SATA cable.

Basically, they are normal SATA cables but for the different connector and extra shielding. One end will be normal SATA, the other eSATA (normal SATA will connect to the HDU).