what is "sata ide combined mode"

[sqlagent]

Hello World,

I have an Asrock 990fx Extreme4 Motherboard.

It has 6 SATA ports and 2 additional SATA ports controlled by an onboard Marvell controller.

I was curious what this option in my mobo's bios does: "SATA IDE COMBINED MODE." (That option is set to disabled)

I'm not at home at my PC now but I have an issue with a Highpoint 620 PCIe 2.0 x1 2x SATA III controller I added to give me a total of 10 SATA ports. The controller card detects my bluray drive (the only device connected to it) during boot up screen but Windows does not see the bluray drive nor does it even know the highpoint card is there.

I'm wondering if SATA IDE Combined mode enabled would resolve it. I'm not at home now or else I would just see for myself. Thanks!

 

[corkyg]

This is another case of technical terminology being lost in the translation and corrupted by numbies. SATA is Serial ATA. PATA is parallel ATA. Both are Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) designs. That means that the drive electronics are contained on the drive's printed circuit card. When SATA became popular and the standard, the older PATA drives were erroneously called "IDE."

So, my interpretation of that stupid labeling means that the port can handle either SATA or PATA. Since the connectors are so different, that would require a combo of both types. That would mean to me that with adapters, the port could handle either serial or paralell ATA devices.

I suggest you ask ASROCK what they are talking about when they use such confusing language. They may be trying to create the alternative to AHCI Mode, and technically, that would be ATA Mode. (ATA would include both serial and parallel versions.)

 

[Meghan54]

Or it may mean simply IDE legacy mode run on the SATA ports, which is what I think AsRock means. Have to go reboot my Z77 Pro4-M and look....will do that after the game, or when it gets too boring.

 

[RU482]

sounds like a Taiwanese BIOS programmer gone rouge

 

[VirtualLarry]

I figured that out through trial and error. What it does, if you enable it, I believe, is to make AMD SATA6G port 4 and 5, act like IDE ports. If you disable it, all six AMD SATA6G ports act as native SATA ports.

This is useful for putting your SATA DVD drive on port 4 or 5, and then enable SATA IDE combined mode, and then you can use boot discs that were programmed for IDE drives instead of SATA DVD drives.

The Marvell SATA6G ports are controlled by a seperate BIOS setting.

Neither one of those settings will have any effect on your HighPoint SATA card. You need to load the Windows drivers for that card, before any device on it can be detected in Windows.

Edit: I have that exact motherboard, the ASRock 990FX Extreme4, as does a friend of mine.

He mentioned a problem, if you connect an IDE HD to the onboard IDE port, and a SATA HD to an AMD SATA port, that you cannot boot the system for some reason. Something to do with boot options not being properly available. I don't know if he updated to the latest BIOS though. I've only ever had an IDE DVD drive connected to the IDE port, and that did work to boot from, even with a SATA HD.

I couldn't figure out how to enable HotPlug support though. With either the MS AHCI drives, or the AMD AHCI drivers, either way I couldn't get HDs plugged into my Rosewill Blackhawk's top SATA dock to show up in "Safely Remove Hardware", like I can with the same case and my Gigabyte P35-DS3R v1.0 with ICH9R.

 

[sqlagent]

I figured that out through trial and error. What it does, if you enable it, I believe, is to make AMD SATA6G port 4 and 5, act like IDE ports. If you disable it, all six AMD SATA6G ports act as native SATA ports.

This is useful for putting your SATA DVD drive on port 4 or 5, and then enable SATA IDE combined mode, and then you can use boot discs that were programmed for IDE drives instead of SATA DVD drives.

The Marvell SATA6G ports are controlled by a seperate BIOS setting.

Neither one of those settings will have any effect on your HighPoint SATA card. You need to load the Windows drivers for that card, before any device on it can be detected in Windows.

I finally got home from a long day at work and figured that out, what you said. Thanks!