SATA controller faster as IDE controller
 

Just installed Abit NF7

Just wondering.

a) Do you get better performance when attaching an IDE disk to the sata controller in stead of the IDE controller ?

b) Is the sata controller considered as scsi or raid ? Because then the W2K OS will not recognise the disk if attached to the sata controller.

Win2K => all onboard raidcontrollers I've seen here are recognised as SCSI devices ;)

I haven't tested it tho, disabled it the minute I got the board ;) I don't think it will have great performance impact (ata100=>133=>150 :/ )

small increase (very) by using the sata controller
no driver disk for the sata controller? Have not yet used a motherboard with sata so i don't know

I have a driver disk.

With scsi or raid you have to press F6 during setup W2K and insert the disk. There is no way to enable it afterwards besides doing a fresh install. Even in repair mode it gives errors.

I'm kinda puzzled if the sata is considered as scsi or raid and consequently i have to do a fresh install.

And i do not feel like doing a fresh install, just did one, 3 boring hours to set up everything correct-a-mundo. I switched the KR7A-R for the NF7 and the fresh image i made on the KR7A wouldn't work on the NF7 because of a different IDE controller ... always errors, no way to fix but formatting and re-installing.

hmmm, What I've seen is that SATA is still a bit slower then normal ATA, mostly because of unopimized drivers.

If you use a SATA-PATA convertor that will slow things down, by a tiny bit more.

and indeed the fun of NT kernel. You got 95% chance that if you switch mobo's, or move drives around that it won't work.
If you're feeling frisky: the problem is most likely your boot.ini file.
There it states what drive ir should boot from.
Something in the line of controller(x)chanel(x)drive(x)partition(x)

Since this has changed if you move your drive, you could run into problems.
This wont help if you switched motherboards whose IDE controller is different, scince it needs other drivers.

I have the same nf7-s mobo with sata, and I installed WinXP on my IDE-ATA disk, then use the sata converter and install the sata driver on the diskette. works fine

the upside : you can now connect 6 IDE devices

Is a IDE disk with a serrirel adapter to S-ATA also hot plugable?

i guess so, I think performance is better when you have more then one HD

Support for hotplug is controllerdependant - not all SATA controllers support hotplug out of the box. Theoretically, SATA is faster with 150mbps and only device per channel (so no latencies for competing devices on one cable). SATA<-> PATA adapters ruin the fun though, as they aren't 100% efficient either and there have been many problemreports (with dataloss as a consequence in many cases). If you are going for SATA, better use real SATA discs or discs that are worth the extra cash, e.g. wd's Raptor (only 36gb, but 10krpms with 5.2 ms access) makes for a nice bootsetup in a stripe hehe...

And yes, any NT-based OS (windows 2000, xp) requires you install bootdevice using F6 during bootup - they are indeed treated as SCSI devices for now.

Already installed and formatted the raptor.

Cannot set it to boot though ... yet (haven't tried really hard, no time) on a NF7-S

The postscreen stops at the silicon raid controller when i set the raptor as bootdisk.

hehe, i'm not going for raptor in raid ... that's just 2 fast ... and would increase the chance changing/upgrading all the PC's at work ... because they would feel like pre-historic :D

Boswachter,

does it detect the Raptor (give it some time) or does it just not boot (set bootpriority to boot from scsi first or an alternative, e.g. if they provide use onboard SATA raid controller use that ofcourse)? Did you use the SATA poweradaptercable?

It's detected, formatted it in W2K, did sandra and atto bench on it.

I only tried twice to boot from it.

- set first boot device to sata controller
-> hangs at silicon post screen

- disabled ide-disks and set only one boot-device, the sata one
-> hangs at silicon post screen

I use the normal 12V connector, no need for sata powercable.

When i have the time i'll look into the sata-bios or switch the sata cable to "slot 2" in stead of "slot 1" or try the 3-4 jumper setting in stead of the recommended 1-2. Cannot find any documentation on the jumper settings, in the web-reviews they all leave it at 1-2.

Try switching ports & cables & check if all connectors are properly seated. If it's not something there or with the controller the drive is probably DOA & it's just a matter of returning it to the dealer for warranty replacement. If you have another SATA controller somewhere or a friend who has one, you could check it there aswell (e.g. try excluding potential compatiblity issues) Definately check if all pins of the molex connectors are connected (you'd be surprised how often it ends up to be one pin has been pushed back a bit in one of the molex connectors that is causing no or erratic powersupply on the 5 or 12v line). Does the drive spin up at all?

Wel in winXP you can hotplug regular IDE devices connected to the on-chipset controller (not a raid or seperate IDE controller however.
This because windows goes in search of the drives itself instead of relying on the bios information like 98 did.

I guess it spins up, it even works, but won't boot.

Definitly update bios and driver (the disk)
There are significant improvements when using newer BIOS and drivers for SATA.

It works fine ... but i cannot use it to boot from ... yet :grin:

Latest mobo bios & silicon drivers ... of course :D

What happens if the bios is detecting the disk: it just plain hangs there & doesn't continue? (without stating it found the raptor)?

If yes, I had a similar issue with a WD ATA harddisc (older firmware revision) on an Nforce 2 board, so it could be related - the fix in that case was to cut the reset wire of the ATA cable (ofcourse, in this case we have a SATA drive). I believe it was fixed later on in software. Could you try to shortly unplug the power & replug the powerconnector of the drive?(as if in a reset) If you do that, does it continue - and if yes, with or without detecting the drive?

Ofcourse: if it's just a matter of the drive not being partitioned, formatted (no correct masterboot record) or boot priority not being set right your system might not boot either. I'm not sure how silicon image's bios handles not finding a bootblock (if it finishes gracefully with an errormessage or just sits there doing nothing)

indeed

New 16 bios fixes "hang at sata-raid post screen" :D