GA-MA790FXT-UD5P Sata connections

[mortda]

Hi
   I've been out of touch when it comes to the new systems that are availble these days and Iam now in the process of building up a new system and amhaving trouble try to figure out the sata connections onthe new board.
   I'm trying to connect up a Wd 640 cavier black HDD (as sole primary sata  Drive, with an old Samasung IDE drive that I hope to copy anumber of files off, to the new drive, plugged into the sole IDE Header onthe M/B)
   The m/b has two groups of sata connectors a total of ten outlets  consisting of a row of 5 connectors with another 5 connectors piggy backing on top of the first 5
    This row of 5 is divided into two blocks, with one block of 4 coloured white and are described in the m/b manual as GSATA2_ 0/1/2/3 controlled by GIGABYTE SATA2/JMB322 and are identified  as such (according to the manual)        top leftt        GSATA2_0         top right              GSATA2_2
                                                                                                                                       bottom left    GSATA2_1        bottom right         GSATA2_3

   The next block are coloured blue and are described in the manual  as  SATA2_0/1/2/3/4/5 SATA3GB/s Connectors Controlled by AMD SB750
 and are identified as such                                                         top left ( of the blue block)   SATA2_0   top middle       SATA2_2  top right      SATA_4
                                                                                                   bottom left                            SATA_1     bottom middle SATA2_3 bottom right SATA_5

 I doesn't matter whether or not I connect my Sata HDD to GSATA_0 or SATA _0  the results in the bios (which I have indicated below) do not give me the result of IDE Master 0 as my primary boot position the closest that I can get is       IDE Master 1     as i have laid out in the connection setup as indicated below in the bios settings. Can some make some sense of what I've tryied to  explain and advise me as whyI cant get the bios to give me the setup of IDE Master_0 as primary hdd position
                                                                                       Thanks,  mortda
       BIOS  Read out
                                IDE     MASTER        SLAVE
                                0             N                 N   
                                1         WDC hdd       ------
                                2             N                 N
                                3             N                 CDROM
                                4             N                 N



 


     

[mark rumsey]

I've been having almost exactly the same problem as you and have come to the conclusion that PATA drives will always end up as the primary if they are installed. I did a lot of experimentation to try and make a SATA drive the boot drive, and whilst it is possible to change the boot priority order in the BIOS and get the BIOS to boot from a SATA drive, Windows refuses to boot from anywhere except the first IDE drive. The PATA connector is linked to IDE0 (master and slave) whether enabled in the BIOS or not whilst the SATA drives are lined to IDE1 onwards. So, if you have an IDE drive connected Windows will always default to that as the boot drive regardelss of what you try in the BIOS. The only way you might get it to work (but I doubt it) is to install Windows with the PATA drive removed, then connect the drive whilst ensuring the BIOS is still set to boot from the SATA drive first and hope that Windows doesn't start complaining about attempting to boot from the wrong drive.

For reference, the drives are allocated as follows.

Drive	Channel	Location
PATA master	IDE0 master	PATA controller
PATA slave	IDE0 slave	PATA controller
SATA	IDE1 master	SATA 2_4 connector
SATA	IDE1 slave	SATA 2_5 connector
SATA	IDE2 master	SATA 2_0 connector
SATA	IDE2 slave	SATA 2_2 connector
SATA	IDE3 master	SATA 2_1 connector
SATA	IDE3 slave	SATA 2_3 connector

Its an odd order, but then SATA 0-3 can be configured as a RAID array whilst still leaving SATA 4-5 as native IDE, which does sort of explain the odd arrangement. I wasn't able to work out the GSATA ports, although these use IDE4 and IDE5, but appear to allocate the channels dynamically depending on what is plugged in.