SATA 3 with WDC HDD not reliable

[ltempleton]

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R rev 1.0
CPU:   Intel Core I7 2.85 GHz
Bios:   Award F4  dated 2/11/2010
6 GB RAM
Primary HDD:   Western Digital 1TB WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0
Secondary HDD:  Western Digital 1TB WD1002FALS-00J7B0
O/S:   Windows 7 Pro build 7600

I originally set up this mobo with the WDC 1002FALS SATA2 HDD as primary. It was quick and reliable. Then I bought the 1002FAEX SATA3 (6GBs) HDD and set it up on the ports that use the Marvell chip. It was quite unreliable. I saw many BSODs, most often on waking up from sleep mode. So I jumpered the HDD to limit it to 3 GBs and connected it to one of the mobo's SATA2 ports. Now we're back to complete reliability and good speed. I have no way of telling whether the problem is in the HDD or the mobo. Anybody have any insight into how to make SATA3 work with this mobo?

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.

The problem is the Marvell 9128 controller chip doesn't live up to the hype. It is supposed to run at SATA3 6GBs throughput but it is not capable as things stand and the Intel ICH10R southbridge controller chip works better even though it is only SATA2 3GBs rated. Actually I have just heard tha Marvell have released some new firmware/drivers for their chip so this situation may change shortly. But at the moment that is the state of play.

It is always possible that your WD Caviar Black SATA3 hard drive is also faulty because I haven't heard of any(including the two I have) BSODing just trying to run at SATA3 speeds. It is a know fact that the WD drives have gone downhill in QA recently and there have been numbers returned due to being faulty.

[absic]

Hi,

If I might add that I had a lot of issues when trying to run my WD Black SATA3 6GB/s HDD's on the Marvell port when I had it set to AHCI or RAID. In IDE Mode it worked OK.

You shouldn't need to limit your drive to 3GB/s on the SATA 2 ports. I have one of my WD drives connected to a SATA2 port and have not had to do this and it works fine.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi,

If I might add that I had a lot of issues when trying to run my WD Black SATA3 6GB/s HDD's on the Marvell port when I had it set to AHCI or RAID. In IDE Mode it worked OK.

You shouldn't need to limit your drive to 3GB/s on the SATA 2 ports. I have one of my WD drives connected to a SATA2 port and have not had to do this and it works fine.

Agreed I think I would advise RMAing the drive just to make sure.

[jdvoracek]

Primary HDD:   Western Digital 1TB WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0
Secondary HDD:  Western Digital 1TB WD1002FALS-00J7B0

You hear a lot of bad things about this Marvell controller, so at least some of them must be true.  I am running a single WD 1 TB at 6 Gb/s AHCI without difficulty.  I've read that this chip won't run two drives at 6 Gb/s or that it won't run SSD's in RAID at either SATA2 or SATA3 (trim problem?).  And I've read stuff that I know isn't true, so all I know for sure is that it works okay with one 6 Gb/s WD 1 TB drive in AHCI mode.  I found out the hard way that the Marvell BIOS needs to match the BIOS.  When you update BIOS, you need to select a Marvell BIOS option that forces it to be the same as that embedded in the BIOS.

[Dark Mantis]

Basically I would agree with most of what you say. There are no problems getting the Mavell controller to work with a single drive SATA2 or 3. Although you cannot expect to get SATA3 speeds at the moment. With SSDs the only real problem is TRIM and the fact that you are limited to single drive arrangements. RAID is possible to get working but too unstable in my view to be viable.

[jdvoracek]

Basically I would agree with most of what you say. There are no problems getting the Mavell controller to work with a single drive SATA2 or 3. Although you cannot expect to get SATA3 speeds at the moment. With SSDs the only real problem is TRIM and the fact that you are limited to single drive arrangements. RAID is possible to get working but too unstable in my view to be viable.

Is there a feeling as to whether this is a firmware issue (potentially fixable) or a hardware issue (potentially not fixable)?  I'll bet the mobo makers are really annoyed with Marvell.

[Dark Mantis]

I am not really sure to be honest. I did think it was a hardware problem and as such not fixable. However recently I have heard rumours that it cabn be fixed by software update. As I say only rumours at the moment but they have juust released a software update that is now incorporated into a BIOS update that is supposed tpo help. We shall see. Pierre has been checking it out and seems to be making hopeful noises