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SATA --- A setup nightmare? POLL EDITED

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Originally posted by: stryker999
frontwards, do you think you could email me those drivers? i'm going to install a SATA drive on the socket 939 gigabyte board soon.
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yeah, i'll see where they are and try to get them to you.

Email addy???
 
Im running a SATA HDD on my A7N8X-E Deluxe. All i did was plug it in and it found it. Nothing else. However when installing windows you do have to hit the F6 key and install it otherwise it wont install.

I have had no problems with it, however IDE is still a very good solution. IMO SATA is a bit more "future proof".

-Kevin
 
Well it's not really amazing since I don't use either one of those vendors for most of my commercial/industrial clients.

I do use Gigabyte and never had any issues with them.

I also do custom bios modifications including upgrading features of onboard RAID, etc. So if it really came down to a matter of non functionality, it can be fixed in house without waiting for the mfr to do it! This is why I spend so much time testing this stuff out so I know it *will* work to avoid crunches.

BTW, mech, rogue chipsets are not permitted!

Cheers!
 
If you stick with a standard Intel chipset and controller you will be fine because you don't need a driver on install.
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Intel's ICH5R needs a driver to install, but it's pretty easy to get from their website and there are instructions on how to extract the needed drivers to a floppy in the readme. The rest is is difficult as pressing F6...
 
Originally posted by: frontwards
Originally posted by: User5
Im having nothing but trouble installing a SATA hard drive on my Asus K8V Deluxe. Its almost as if Asus makes it so that the only times you can use SATA drives, is with a RAID configuration, not a single one. Even the manual just skips over setting up SATA hdds, and goes straight to SATA RAID

But maybe its just Asus.
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i had a similar problem with my gigabyte board. there was tons of documentation of RAID, but nothing for the case where a SATA drive was your primary HDD. i just called gigabyte and told the tech guy that i needed drivers so that i could use the SATA drive. He emailed me the drivers, i put them on a floppy and pressed F6 during the windows install to install my 3rd party SATA drivers. it was a bitch before i got that disk, but that was the only hard part.
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Exactely. I'm sure his manual didn't ask him to contact tech support to get a non published driver or to just wait for a bios update until the boot order is fixed. Not all SATA configurations are hard to set up. In fact most are no different than a PATA setup. But there's just so many out there that cause a headache, sometimes it's not worth the hassle when the exact PATA equivalent wouldn't cause the same problems.
 
Originally posted by: nitromullet
If you stick with a standard Intel chipset and controller you will be fine because you don't need a driver on install.
Click to expand...
Intel's ICH5R needs a driver to install, but it's pretty easy to get from their website and there are instructions on how to extract the needed drivers to a floppy in the readme. The rest is is difficult as pressing F6...
Click to expand...

And there's a conflict right there. I didn't need to hit F6 installing a Seagate SATA drive on one.

Well it's not really amazing since I don't use either one of those vendors for most of my commercial/industrial clients.

I do use Gigabyte and never had any issues with them.

I also do custom bios modifications including upgrading features of onboard RAID, etc. So if it really came down to a matter of non functionality, it can be fixed in house without waiting for the mfr to do it! This is why I spend so much time testing this stuff out so I know it *will* work to avoid crunches.

BTW, mech, rogue chipsets are not permitted!
Click to expand...

Then you have to admit that RTFM doesn't cut it for most SATA out there if you yourself aren't using some the more popular boards in the enthusiast market. In my experience, I've gone through 4 motherboards with SATA problems that were eventually solved by BIOS updates. I'm a slow learner, but now I don't have to worry about those problems because I use PATA drives. And I can't write a custom BIOS to fix them, because the manual doesn't explain how to do that 😉
 
Originally posted by: sharkeeper
Well it's not really amazing since I don't use either one of those vendors for most of my commercial/industrial clients.

I do use Gigabyte and never had any issues with them.

I also do custom bios modifications including upgrading features of onboard RAID, etc. So if it really came down to a matter of non functionality, it can be fixed in house without waiting for the mfr to do it! This is why I spend so much time testing this stuff out so I know it *will* work to avoid crunches.

BTW, mech, rogue chipsets are not permitted!

Cheers!
Click to expand...
If you will not help people with their problems, then kindly refrain from jumping in here and tossing superficial four-letter insults at them as if it really were as simple as reading a manual where it's all explained in plain language. I would have thousands fewer posts if that were really the case.
 
If you will not help people with their problems, then kindly refrain from jumping in here and tossing superficial four-letter insults at them as if it really were as simple as reading a manual where it's all explained in plain language. I would have thousands fewer posts if that were really the case.
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I do more than my fair share of giving people advice. I never insulted anyone and the familiar acronyms are commonplace.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother with this place anymore.

Cheers!
 
Fair enough. Back to the topic of the thread, are you saying consumer-level SATA is something you'd recommend for new and intermediate builders? Review the thread I linked above briefly, and if you need more to judge by, search for threads with "SATA" in the title and "mechBgon" as the author. There's plenty :evil:

My feeling after slogging through peoples' owners' manuals with them, is that it is not as transparent as it ought to be. If it were even as simple as just pressing the F6 key for drivers, and selecting "SCSI" in the BIOS as the boot device, that would be great. But there are some boards that are simply ridiculous, like the Abit i865/i875 ones... here's a blurb from one owner who got his going after referring to one of my previous efforts with this non-rogue chipset:
hi mechBgon

thanks for all your help.

first of all - i've built a few pcs before and never used memtest86 - its great - i'll be using it a lot from now on!

secondly, i found the problem thanks to your other thread. i'm not sure if it made any difference, but i aslo installed all the sata drivers during the windows installation - although i definitely installed an sata disk before on a different box without having to do this (but it wasnt win2003 - so maybe that needs it)

but where i think the main problem was - was in the bios settings - here are the settings that worked for me (this one is without raid - im waiting on a second disk to set up the raid):

note - these are from memory (and from your other thread) - i dont have the box in front of me atm:

Under Integrated Peripherals -> OnChip IDE Device:
IDE Bus Master - Enabled
OnChip Serial ATA - enhanced
OnChip Serial ATA Mode - ide
SATA RAID ROM - Enabled

Advanced BIOS Features:
Hard Disk Boot Priority - 1. Bootable Add-in Device
Bootable Add-in Device - Onboard sata
Boot Other Device - Enabled
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Comments? Still think it's as easy as reading a manual? There's a whole heirarchy of settings here that have to be properly arranged to get the board to do what he wants it to do.

My position is that it should be as simple to boot from SATA as it is from PATA, or at least from an add-in SCSI card, no worse than that. Reality is quite different for some folks at the moment.
 
I would go PATA, easy, about 15% cheaper and just as fast. If noise is an issue go for seagate or samsung. If speed is what your after hitachi makes the fastest. Either way get the 8mb buffer ones which carry the three year warranty.
 
I'm sure you'll have enough to worry about for your first build, so going PATA is a good choice.

Good luck on it and hopefully it'll go smoothly for ya.
 
I am using a Gigabyte K8NNXP mobo with a WD S-ATA hard drive. I had a ton of problems setting it up but I asked advice in these forums and was helped by everyone who posted a reply. It works and should have been easy to set up but for one problem ... the HD comes with a jumper and the instructions recommend not moving the jumper to any other setting. Unfortunately, the factory had the jumper on the wrong pins (Cable) and that is what gave me the problems. Once that was fixed it was a very simple install.
Go with the S-ATA drive.
 
Originally posted by: laurenlex
Only 6 votes????

And 50% think I am an idiot???

I kinda thought that would happen.

But please more votes on IDE or SATA please.
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You need better choices. I like the ease of PATA, and the smal cable of SATA, and its not too tough, but depending on the mobo, it can be (and if you are a newbie or not)

Like 1) PATA for newbie
2) PATA ONLY
3) SATA for newbie,
4) SATA ONLY
5) Either is fine, you decide
6) Don't know, or only view results

Then you won;t get such bad results.
 
SATA isn't really that difficult, although when I built a system around the asus a7n8x-e deluxe I had two minor issues
1: (my fault) I downloaded the IDE driver, when I should have downloaded the RAID driver. These two were close enough that windows installed, but the driver had an exclamation mark.

2: NTFSDOS errors out making it a little bit harder to get direct access to a nonbootable system due to a corrupt registry/sam file.
 
Originally posted by: spidey07
hmmm, I'm a complete newbie.

I built a PC, plugged in the SATA drive, loaded the OS and was all set.
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Seems like it depends what motherboard you have, so go ahead and post what you got everyone.

I was lucky with the NF7-Sv2 and a Seagate 160Gb, just had to try a couple of the different drivers, and I wasn't in a rush. I did put on the latest bios as my first step.
And thanks mechBgon for your help, both the guide and elsewhere.

I guess alot of times the manuals don't cover SATA as the only/boot drive. Mine didn't, so we can blame them. 🙂
 
Poll needs an "IDE = best option" option. I don't think you're an idiot, nor would I bother with PATA/SATA 🙂
 
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