SATA 100/150/II

[loonatik]

I currently have the GA-K8N Ultra-9 motherboard.

4 x Serial ATA 2 3.0Gb/s with NV Raid 0/1/0+1
4 x Serial ATA with RAID 0 or 1, RAID5 by Silicon Image sil 3114 controller

....

I also purchased the Seagate 120GB Barracuda 7200RPM SATA drive.

Interface: Serial SATA 150

....

I did not realize this was SATA 150. I have read a few posts on here saying that I can still use this drive. I am having a problem trying to install windows xp. The BIOS detects the drive, but when I go to install XP, it does not seem to get past the initial part of the install. It will go through some of the setup, and appears to format the drive and copy the setup files. But upon reboot it refuses to boot off of it.

What I would like to know is what are the differences between the ATA's. Especially the difference between ATA100 and ATA150.

If I am looking to get the best gaming performance out of my machine, should I purchase a SATA II drive?

If SATA 100/150 is fine, is it possible to use this drive with my motherboard? (With a side question of is there a better drive for the money)

Loon

 

[ribbon13]

You won't have any problems

The only difference with SATA II is NCQ is now required and it sports a higher maximum trans rate nothing is going to touch except multiple drives on a single channel.

 

[loonatik]

Well I am having problems. I assume what you are saying is this should work. I think I finally got raid disabled and im going to try to reinstall windows again. I assume I should be using the red cable not the yellow one. I have tried both.

Has anyone else experienced this before?

 

[ribbon13]

You press F6, give it the drivers from floppy when it asks, and windows see the drive correctly?

 

[loonatik]

Hmm, using the red cable its not detecting the drive. What floppy should I have? This is an OEM drive. Do I need to get it from seagate? (Going to look)

 

[ribbon13]

No, you need a driver disk for the Sil3114. It sshould have came with the motherboard There are two SATA controllers on your board. I'd use the 3114, its better.
http://images10.newegg.com/productimage/13-128-283-02.JPG

 

[loonatik]

Should I have all the raid stuff disabled or should I just leave bios defaults?

 

[ribbon13]

reset your CMOS and try again. I'll download your manual and take a look

 

[loonatik]

If I go into the Raid configuration utility, it shows my drive as a physical drive and it asks me to create a raid set. I have the option to make a JBOD (Single) Raid set. Would this help me at all? I think I figured out how to enter F6, im going to try that right now.

 

[ribbon13]

No! you don't need to enter the raid config at all...

 

[ribbon13]

Look at page 34 of your manual
1st boot device should be CD-ROM
2nd device should be Hard-drive

Like I said, reset your CMOS, and make sure your Seagate is hooked up to SATA1 of the Sil3114 (Between the purple and yellow headers).
When Windows setup says "Press F6" at the bottom of the screen, press F6 and put in the Sil3114 driver floppy when it asks.

 

[loonatik]

.

 

[loonatik]

Ok, here is what I have done.

I have reset defaults in cmos. I have changed the boot priority to CDROM > Hardrive. I moved the drive to SATA1 (Not SATA0, which dosent work either). Which are the red connectors and red cable between the yellow and purple headers. The drive does not show up in CMOS. I made it into F6, but I dont have any floppy that came with the board, and I dont have a floppy drive installed. So, im going to work on getting that and see if it fixes this problem.

I have built quite a few machines, even ones with SATA, but, ive never hit this kind of a problem. Is it due to using SATA150? Or is it because this board just requires some additional work?

..........

If I plug it into the SATA0 yellow connectors, and disabled raid, the drive does show up in CMOS.

To disable raid, I did the following. If you look at page 36, I am setting IDE/SATA RAID function to Disabled, that in turn disables

SATA 1 Primary RAID
SATA 1 Secondary RAID

SATA 2 Primary RAID
SATA 2 Secondary RAID

I have not changed SATA RAID-5 Function at the bottom.

But if I go to install windows, it works just like the original problem that I posted.

...............

I am working on getting the floppy so I can load the drivers.

Loon

 

[loonatik]

Well I finally got it going. I ended up just using the SATA2 native controller. All I had to do was use the SATA2, disable raid, and install. It worked perfectly.

I did learn about controllers like the sil though. They require additonal drivers to work. I appreciate your help ribbon. I would install the drivers, but I cant find a floppy drive that works.

What is better about the Sil 3114 SATA1 controller vs the nforce4 SATA2 controller?

 

[Gamingphreek]

Nothing is better. The Nforce 4 port doesn't run off of the PCI bus. However because it communicates directly with the southbridge it can limit overclocks.

Additionally IIRC, the 3114 might support RAID 5; not like you would need or use it though.

Finally there is no SATA 100. THere is 150 and then SATA 300. Generation 1 and Generation II respectively. Seeing as the drives aren't even near 100 on sustained and burst transfer rates are only around 100 you will notice probably no performance increase at all.

-Kevin