WD10EACS and oldish onboard SATA-I problem..
Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 4:36 pm
Guys,
I was hoping someone could shed some light on a problem I'm having.
I have a DFI NFII Ultra Infinity motherboard which has an onboard Silicon Image SATA1 3114 controller and I have three SAMSUNG HD501LJ happily hanging off three of the four SATA ports (non-RAID).
I've now tried to add a Western Digital WD10EACS (5400rpm version) drive to them and I'm having a problem.
At boot (before the OS) the first text to appear is the graphics card text, and then the standard BIOS boot text with memory test, PATA drive info and so on. Then the text from the Siil 3114 RAID SATA BIOS appears.. and this is where I have a problem..
if I only have the Samsungs plugged in a table of "port#,model#,capacity" appears. which is fine and dandy.
If I however plug in the WD10EACS into the last available port I get to the SATA table stage and it prints the Samsungs' details hanging off port 0 and 1, but when it gets to port 2 where the WDC is it prints the model number WD10EACS-65D6B0 but hangs where it should print capacity and doesn't do anything more. It doesn't print the details of the HD501LJ on port 3.
I thought maybe the WD10EACS isn't switching to automatically backwards compatibility mode so I added the necessary jumper, and it didn't help.
The system BIOS is up to date but dates back to 2004.
The SATA controller BIOS isn't up to date but the version available from Silicon Image says "motherboard BIOS for OEM use in development" so I'd rather not try to hack it into the system BIOS I have.
I've tried swapping SATA cables and I've tried the WDC on different SATA ports without success.
I don't have any other SATA hosts that I could try the drive on.
Does anyone have any ideas or had a similar problem?
I suspect it may be the controller disliking the bigness of the new drive - I've found at least one mention of a similar problem.
I'm thinking my only solution is to buy an external USB/FW/eSATA enclosure or an extra SATA PCI controller.. which I'd prefer not to do if I still have a spare port on board.
TIA, DonP.
I was hoping someone could shed some light on a problem I'm having.
I have a DFI NFII Ultra Infinity motherboard which has an onboard Silicon Image SATA1 3114 controller and I have three SAMSUNG HD501LJ happily hanging off three of the four SATA ports (non-RAID).
I've now tried to add a Western Digital WD10EACS (5400rpm version) drive to them and I'm having a problem.
At boot (before the OS) the first text to appear is the graphics card text, and then the standard BIOS boot text with memory test, PATA drive info and so on. Then the text from the Siil 3114 RAID SATA BIOS appears.. and this is where I have a problem..
if I only have the Samsungs plugged in a table of "port#,model#,capacity" appears. which is fine and dandy.
If I however plug in the WD10EACS into the last available port I get to the SATA table stage and it prints the Samsungs' details hanging off port 0 and 1, but when it gets to port 2 where the WDC is it prints the model number WD10EACS-65D6B0 but hangs where it should print capacity and doesn't do anything more. It doesn't print the details of the HD501LJ on port 3.
I thought maybe the WD10EACS isn't switching to automatically backwards compatibility mode so I added the necessary jumper, and it didn't help.
The system BIOS is up to date but dates back to 2004.
The SATA controller BIOS isn't up to date but the version available from Silicon Image says "motherboard BIOS for OEM use in development" so I'd rather not try to hack it into the system BIOS I have.
I've tried swapping SATA cables and I've tried the WDC on different SATA ports without success.
I don't have any other SATA hosts that I could try the drive on.
Does anyone have any ideas or had a similar problem?
I suspect it may be the controller disliking the bigness of the new drive - I've found at least one mention of a similar problem.
I'm thinking my only solution is to buy an external USB/FW/eSATA enclosure or an extra SATA PCI controller.. which I'd prefer not to do if I still have a spare port on board.
TIA, DonP.