500GB SATA HD, Samsung HD501LJ, doesn't support ACPI!

[Muse]

I've spent around 1/2 my weekend trying to troubleshoot not having Suspend (S1 or S3) or Hibernate on my newly acquired (and new) Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro nForce3 150 motherboard based system, that I just assembled over the last couple of weeks.

For a while I thought the problem was due to XP Pro at the beginning of the installation process deciding that my system did not adequately support ACPI. This is a well known issue and can be dealt with (at the users peril!) by changing one character in the TXTSETUP.SIF file on the XP install disk. However, in Device Manager, it said my computer is ACPI Uniprocessor PC, so I figured that the problem was caused by something else.

Nothing I did revealed what is causing the problem until this:

I downloaded the latest nVidia WHQL driver (169.21_forceware_winxp_32bit_english_whql.exe) and I was about to uninstall my video driver and install the new one (I saw posts suggesting that this problem is the great majority of the time due to not having an updated video driver installed) when I thought I'd continue what I was doing earlier in the day before I took a break from all this -- I had done a google on "standby greyed out" and got lots of hits. On the second Google page was this one:

http://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php?t=81547

A guy suggested the fellow having the problem do an Everest Home Edition report and paste it in a post. Having the program already installed, I did a report and started searching through it for a clue. I left off at around 25% into the long report. Just now, I decided to look further into the report before uninstalling my display driver and installing the new one. I noticed this about my rather newish 500 GB SATA HD:

[ SAMSUNG HD501LJ (S0MUJ1PP310938) ]

ATA Device Properties:
Model ID SAMSUNG HD501LJ
Serial Number S0MUJ1PP310938
Revision CR100-10
Parameters 969021 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors per track, 554 bytes per sector
LBA Sectors 976773168
Buffer 16 MB (Dual Ported, Read Ahead)
Multiple Sectors 16
ECC Bytes 4
Max. PIO Transfer Mode PIO 4
Max. UDMA Transfer Mode UDMA 6 (ATA-133)
Active UDMA Transfer Mode UDMA 5 (ATA-100)
Unformatted Capacity 516064 MB

ATA Device Features:
SMART Supported
Security Mode Supported
Power Management Supported
Advanced Power Management Not Supported
Write Cache Supported
Host Protected Area Supported
Power-Up In Standby Not Supported
Automatic Acoustic Management Supported
48-bit LBA Supported
Device Configuration Overlay Supported

ATA Device Manufacturer:
Company Name Samsung
Product Information http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/index.htm
- - - -
In particular, I noticed where it said (The bolding above was added here, not in the Everest report.):

Advanced Power Management Not Supported
...and...
Power-Up In Standby Not Supported

So, I figuring it was another wild goose chase (I've been doing them all weekend trying to resolve this!), I went into the BIOS and disabled SATA HD support. Upon rebooting, my 500 GB SATA drive is no longer seen, but my Standby and Hibernate are suddenly ENABLED!

I find this amazing. SATA HD's are supposed to be an advance, a relative newcomer in the PC storage scene, and installing one has disabled my ACPI! I wonder if there is a workaround? Maybe if I get an SATA controller card?? Or maybe if I get a different SATA HD?

I already have the latest BIOS installed for my motherboard.

 

[Auric]

I have experience with HD501LJ's and a five year old Intel controller and had no such issue. Those bolded features are not related to suspend and hibernate but rather are internal drive features.

Disabling SATA eliminated the real problem which is a flaky chipset/controller/driver.

Possible solutions:
-different storage controller driver (Microsoft Standard rather than Nvidia)
-BIOS update/contact Gigabyte
-use third-party controller instead (if supplied)
-perhaps there is a compatability mode where SATA is treated as PATA and that may work... or not

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Auric
I have experience with HD501LJ's and a five year old Intel controller and had no such issue. Those bolded features are not related to suspend and hibernate but rather are internal drive features.

Disabling SATA eliminated the real problem which is a flaky chipset/controller/driver.

Possible solutions:
-different storage controller driver (Microsoft Standard rather than Nvidia)
-BIOS update/contact Gigabyte
-use third-party controller instead (if supplied)
-perhaps there is a compatability mode where SATA is treated as PATA and that may work... or not

Further monkeying around revealed more info. You are right that disabling SATA eliminated my loss of ACPI support, but I did some experiments. Disconnecting the drive and enabling SATA still had ACPI unsupported, so I realized that the problem was evidently not the Samsung SATA drive but had something to do with my motherboard or its drivers. On a hunch/stab-in-the-dark I went back in the BIOS and changed the Serial ATA Function from BASE to RAID. I don't know much about RAID, and I had/have no intention to set up a RAID array of drives for redundancy or faster HD functionality, so I had set Serial ATA Function in the BIOS to BASE rather than RAID. However, changing it to RAID eliminated the loss of ACPI! Also, the drive is seen in Windows. I had no such problems when I chose the non-RAID IDE option in the BIOS. Well, what does this mean? I have a manual supplied with the motherboard on SATA RAID for the Sil3112 chipset (also one for the IDE RAID), but it looks kind of intimidating, and like I said I have no intention of setting up a RAID array. Does anyone have a take on this or what it can mean?

 

[Auric]

The driver likely changed when switched from BASE to RAID so the fault could either be with the BIOS or the driver. Given the latest BIOS from Gigabyte, did you try updating the driver (from Silicon Image directly for latest)? With an SI based card, it does not matter if it has a RAID BIOS for non-RAID useage so I posit there is no harm in using the mobo RAID option. I would be inclined to try the BASE with the latest driver though just because it is slightly less complex so should at least nominally be the ideal.

-
Also, if the problem was with the BIOS but the mobo manufacturer has not supplied an update, it is possible to replace the controller portion (i.e. modify Gigabyte BIOS file with new Silicon Image BIOS file) however that would of course be relatively risky and unnecessary given you have found an option that works.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Auric
The driver likely changed when switched from BASE to RAID so the fault could either be with the BIOS or the driver. Given the latest BIOS from Gigabyte, did you try updating the driver (from Silicon Image directly for latest)? With an SI based card, it does not matter if it has a RAID BIOS for non-RAID useage so I posit there is no harm in using the mobo RAID option. I would be inclined to try the BASE with the latest driver though just because it is slightly less complex so should at least nominally be the ideal.

-
Also, if the problem was with the BIOS but the mobo manufacturer has not supplied an update, it is possible to replace the controller portion (i.e. modify Gigabyte BIOS file with new Silicon Image BIOS file) however that would of course be relatively risky and unnecessary given you have found an option that works.

You are smart! You're right on the money there. Posting in the Gigabyte newsgroup a guy who I take for a moderator linked me to the Silicone Image non-RAID driver for this chip, http://www.siliconimage.com/do...-x86-1.3.68.2-logo.zip which is the first file listed at http://www.siliconimage.com/su...9&cid=3&ctid=2&osid=4&

It seems to be exactly what I needed to run the SATA HD in BASE mode and retain ACPI functions. Windows didn't want to install it (I was still in RAID mode), but I asked it to anyway for the SI controller, rebooted, put the controller in BASE mode and started Windows and ACPI was working as well as the SATA HD.

One thing has me confused: A couple of times today I went into Standby and had the BIOS wake the system by alarm. I always have the Alarm function set to everyday, and I reset the time several times today. The first 2-3 times I had the system automatically wake from Standby, it worked, started on time, wakening from Standby. But the last 1/2 dozen times I've tried that, the system did nothing. It acted as though no alarm had been set. When I shutdown the system normally, it starts by the Alarm. I have no idea why it's not working anymore (waking from S3 Suspend by Alarm).

Edit: Another funny thing is that included with this new motherboard in the box was a manual for a chip that isn't on the mobo, a 3112, not the 3512 which I have. I downloaded the correct manual from Gigabyte and printed it out. I wasted some time today downloading the 3112 driver and trying to install it, and of course, Windows told me it wouldn't work. Part of the reason I'm having these problems is that the CD that came with the mobo is so badly warped that it's completely unusable. I tried to flatten it out, but without success. So, I've had to rely on what's available from Gigabyte's website.

 

[Auric]

I am super genius. I am robot king of the marsupial things. Compute, compute.

Glad you got it mostly sorted. I have never used Alarm meself and cannot guess why it's acting flaky. The wrong manual driver goose chase couldn't have helped troubleshooting eh? I find it is good to check the mobo maker's site but for the latest 'n' greatest it's usually better to go to the component maker's.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Auric
I am super genius. I am robot king of the marsupial things. Compute, compute.

Glad you got it mostly sorted. I have never used Alarm meself and cannot guess why it's acting flaky. The wrong manual driver goose chase couldn't have helped troubleshooting eh? I find it is good to check the mobo maker's site but for the latest 'n' greatest it's usually better to go to the component maker's.

:laugh: You are a few miles ahead of me on the component maker drivers thing. I'll try to keep that in mind, though.

Truly, I can live with having to shut down the system before an Alarm based reawakening. I'd prefer it otherwise. Maybe I'll chase that one around a bit and see if I can tease it out.