SATA questions

[Ronin13]

The last parts for my new build arrived today:

Antec P150
ASUS P5B-E Plus (965e chipset)
Conroe E6600
Corsair PC6400C4 RAM, 2 GB
WD3200KS SATA hard drive
Plextor 760 SATA DVD burner
eVGA 8800 GTS
X-Fi Xtreme Gamer

I'm unsure about how to get the best performance from my SATA hard drive. AFAIK it will be set in the BIOS to IDE (by default) but if you want to use RAID or AHCI, those have to be enabled in the BIOS.

And if I want to enable RAID or AHCI I'll need the Intel(R) Matrix Storage Manager Driver, right? Which requires me to hook up a floppy drive so I can load the SATA drivers during installation?

But I won't need that driver to run the drive in IDE mode?

As I don't plan on using RAID or AHCI, should I just let the SATA mode stay as IDE?

Will it affect performance and transfer rates?

Notes:

Intel advices gainst changing SATA mode on the boot drive after installation of the OS.

I've read about problems with the Plextor SATA drive when SATA mode isn't set to IDE.

AFAIK AHCI is needed for NCQ, but since NCQ doesn't have any benefits for my setup/uses I would rather do without it.

As I plan to finish the build tomorrow, I really hope someone can help me out before then...

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[Boyo]

I don't even have a clue as to what you are talking about. Why would you run SATA as IDE and why are you bringing up RAID when you are only buying one HD?

 

[Ronin13]

Originally posted by: Boyo
I don't even have a clue as to what you are talking about. Why would you run SATA as IDE and why are you bringing up RAID when you are only buying one HD?

Because it can be run as IDE (and it will be set to do so be default in the BIOS), and if I don't need the SATA drivers I may not need to remove a floppy drive from another computer and hook it up to this one during installation (?).

I just want to make sure about whether I need those drivers or not (and is the 'Push F6 to install from floppy' during installatin really mandatory for SATA drivers? It seems so awkward).

Will I get lower transfer rates or otherwise lose performance if my SATA drive is set to IDE?

I bring up RAID, because some might say to enable RAID in the BIOS to 'future proof' the setup, in case I would add another disk later on (this is what Intel recommends, as they advice against changing the SATA mode on a boot drive after OS installation).

edit: Tried to clarify my questions.

 

[boomerang]

Nevermind.

 

[Seekermeister]

By using SATA drives without raid, you are not using them as IDEs. IDEs are PATA, using IDE slots, and the SATAs use the SATA slots. Two things entirely different.

 

[Ronin13]

Originally posted by: Seekermeister
By using SATA drives without raid, you are not using them as IDEs. IDEs are PATA, using IDE slots, and the SATAs use the SATA slots. Two things entirely different.

Yes, but the SATA drive can be run as a PATA drive. From my motherboard manual:

'If you want to use the Serial ATA hard disk drives as Parallel ATA physical storage devices, keep the default setting [IDE].'

Since noone have been able to answer any of my questions, I guess I must have made them overly complicated or confusing, so let me try again:

The disk that came with my motherboard has a 'Make Disk Menu', where I can create either an ICH8 or a JMicron JMB36X RAID/AHCI driver disk. These are to be used during the initial OS installation, as apparently those drivers aren't part of the OS.

1: Have all of you with SATA drives been through a setup that required SATA drivers on a floppy?

2: If not, am I going to get less than optimal performance if I don't install the above mentioned drivers? (Like, will the theoretical max transfer rate still be 300MB/s?)

3: If it is possible to get by without those drivers - no need for RAID or AHCI, SATA configured as [IDE] performs just as fast - would there be other reasons why I would still want to install those drivers?

As I'm about to start with this build, I really hope that someone can answer one or more of these...

 

[KaChow]

Leave the default setting of IDE on the P5B motherboards. You don't need drivers, the SATA drive will work like normal and it will be fast. I have a 320GB Seagate using the default settings on a P5B Deluxe and it works great without any additional drivers.

 

[mechBgon]

Ronin13, it looks like you did a good job with your research Since you asked if I had any input, I think I'd stick with the "look ma, no floppy!" method, like you're leaning towards already.

Will lack of NCQ make a difference? Probably not for a gaming rig. I use 15000rpm SCSI drives, and I can enable/disable TCQ with a checkbox, and it only made a few % difference in my favorite real-world disk-intensive benchmark.

 

[Ronin13]

Thanks for your replies

So I finished the build yesterday, and my plan was to see if I could avoid the floppy-driver-route. But I never got that far. At first power-up, both my SATA DVD burner and the SATA had drive was detected as sitting on the correct SATA ports I had hooked them up to, but somewhere between POST and Setup I would get some 'Drive Failure' message and the system would hang with a 'Wait...' message.

On reboot this either repeated or the system wouldn't even power up - it would be caught in a state where the CPU fan and the case fan would spin up for a second - when it wouldn't 'catch', the system would power down, immediately trying to power on again, etc until I turned off the power.

I tried hooking the hard disk up to different SATA ports on the mother board, soon the disk wasn't even being detected anymore during POST, and finally it started what I guess must be the hard drive 'click of death', when the system was powered on.

I instead found an old IDE disk and hooked that up. Everything worked fine and I could proceed to install XP without problems. I ran some benchmarks and everything seems stable.

I'm pretty sure that my SATA drive was DOA (or at least, half-dead), but is there any last check I could perform to be absolutely sure? (I don't have another SATA capable rig to check it on.)