damned SATA converter!!!

[bananaman]

HI,

I have been using my main hard drive - 60GB maxtor ATA133 on the bundled SATA converter and it has been working fine for weeks, until today when i shut down, then about an hour later turned back on and it didnt detect the drive. THe drive is fine and now running on IDE again, i tried reinstalling the SATA drivers (version 28 but still didnt work. I have tried it on my other hard drive, unplugging it, plugging it into the other SATA port. I just have no idea

I am runnig the 1.4 beta bios

any suggestions, i dont really know how to find out if my SATA is buggered, i was planning to buy a native in a few days but not sure if i will now.

Thanks in advance for the help

NANA

 

[Sonny]

Some of the SATA Converters do not like running with ATA133 drives.

 

[bananaman]

i read that somewhere but as i have bveen running for weeks, and it didnt work on my ATA100 drive either i was thinking it was either the converter or more worringly the SATA itself!

anyone got any ideas on how i could see if the which one is broken - windows detects the silicon image SATA chip and i have reinstalled drivers so i hope it is just a didgy converter

cheers

NANA

 

[Sonny]

Damn I just noticed that you had a NF2 & SI SATA Controller, that right there is a big headache. I can't help you on this because I realy dont have any experince with it but I guess by now you have heard of the horro stories about it but mostly on RAID Arrays though some have had the problem with single drive setups.

 

[bananaman]

yeah i heard the problems so i waited until a fix came out - ie bios 1.4 before i tried the converter, and it is just annoying to be running fine then suddenly stop working - i guess it is the converter but i dont want to buy a native SATA and then find i have a f00ked board.

cheers for replying Sonny

ANyone else had similar problems or any suggestions on a fix? I have tried changing the timeing to 1ms but stil nothing, doesnt even detect the HD on bootup??

NANA

 

[taco_fox]

Well.. I have two Maxtor drives, and the SATA converter would only recognize one of them.

Maxtor 40GB ATA133 -> Wouldn't work, no matter what
Maxtor 30GB ATA100 -> Works fine

That's about the limit of my experience with it.

 

[Tecumseh]

I can't add too much but there have been issues with the
Silicon Image SATA chips....corruption and such. I personally
wouldn't use a card with the SI chips. I don't think their
chip is spec'd for ATA133.

 

[bananaman]

it just seems strange that it was working - no corruption or anything and then it just stopped - but it works fine on IDE. STill trying to get it to work, annoying as hell.

What do ppl think on buying a native SATA drive, think it will work? i think it might as i have heard the ABit seriel converters are a biot dodgy sometimes

NANA

 

[Tecumseh]

Here's a long shot: With the drive hooked up on the regular
ribbon cable, force the drive to a slower DMA mode. Reboot
once to see if this mode "sticks" and then shutdown and
re-attach as a SATA. It might just sync-up and run fine again.

 

[bananaman]

doesnt seem to work, tried it and on my ATA100 drive (see sig) and it didnt like either of them - i think it might be a crappy seriell converter - as surely if the SIl Image chip was buggered windows wouldnt detect it properly wehn i reinstalled the drivers for it? AM going to order a native SATA drive next week and sell old one to mate, so *fingers crossed* it will work

NANA

 

[Sonny]

What do ppl think on buying a native SATA drive, think it will work?

They work but the same problems with other drives on the SI Controller. deathstar13 has some experience on this so you will want to ask him to look at this thread.