GA-H67MA-UD2H-B3 won't work with SATA-III Drives connected to its SATA-III Ports

[IsLNdbOi]

I've been having problems getting my 600GB VelociRaptor working.  Whenever I would try wiping it with Killdisk I'd get continuous lbacache flush errors.  With DBAN, it would immediately terminate with non-fatal errors.  Windows would freeze and never finish starting up when the VelociRaptor was connected.

Went through three 600GB VelociRaptors thinking they were all defective.  On the fourth one, I tried plugging it into one of the SATA-II ports and it worked just fine.  The previous three were all connected to either of the SATA-III ports.

Is there a BIOS update coming to fix this?

I've already emailed Gigabyte support regarding this issue.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

I haven't heard of this problem before. My Western Digital Black SATA3 drives work fine on the SATA3 ports. I have tried them in RAID0 and singly with no issues at all.

What access mode is it set to and what mode is the controller set to ?

Have you enabled SMART reporting ?

[Lsdmeasap]

Do they work fine otherwise?   I mean have you only tried using the 6Gb/s ports to wipe the drives, or have you also tried using them on those ports without success?

It's normal for wipe programs to not work properly unless they are on the SATA 3Gb/s ports, some even need to be in IDE mode to function properly (HDDErase)

[IsLNdbOi]

I've tried setting the ports to AHCI and IDE mode then I've tried changing legacy and native IDE mode in both AHCI and IDE modes.  The problem happens all the time no matter what the SATA ports are set to in the BIOS.

During POST (or right after it, I see this regarding SMART):
http://img860.imageshack.us/img860/7810/smartfail.jpg

For those who can't see the picture, it's the part after POST that shows the Serial ATA AHCI BIOS version and lists what's connected to the controller.

The listing for the 600GB VelociRaptor says:
Port-01: Hard Disk, WDC WD600HLHX-01JJPV0
SMART command failed

The drives work fine otherwise in other computers and on the SATA-II ports on this GA-H67MA-UD2H-B3.  The first two 600GB VelociRaptors were rendered unusable though after some time when I was testing to see if any of my wiping programs would work on them (before I found what was causing the problems - not working on the SATA-III ports).

[Dark Mantis]

Your drive is failing the SMART testing for some reason. I am not sure why at the moment as I have set my WD Blacks to SMART checking and they seem to pass fine. You may have a faulty controller and so maybe an RMA is in order.

[IsLNdbOi]

Is it still faulty if I don't get the SMART error when the drive is connected to a SATA-II port?  I also have an Intel 160GB G2 SSD connected to a SATA-III port w/o any problems.

[Dark Mantis]

Well the SSD wil be faster I am sure but that doesn't mean that there might be some other reason why it is failing SMART. It could be that the two different SATA2 and SATA3 ports are implimenting the SMART in different ways.

[IsLNdbOi]

I don't know what to do at this point.  Everything seems to be working fine now.  As long as I don't use SATA-III / 6gbps drives on the SATA-III ports...

[Dark Mantis]

Yes it does seem stupid I must admit. The thing is as I said the SSD would still be faster then the WD Velociraptor as it is a magnetic platter. It is only the interface that is different. My feeling would be to RMA the board even though I can't explain why.  It is a case of when everything else has been checked there is only one solution.

Just one thing springs to mind you are using the SATA3 cables that came with the board aren't you ?

[Lsdmeasap]

I tried to look around and see if SMART is working on 6Gb/s ports yet, and I assume it is and things look that way in Google as well, but I did notice many similar issues with your drive during my search.   And many of those ended up being faulty drives, here is one were a user actually posted back after talking to WD, they confirmed bad sectors.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/15334-63-sata3-drive

This batch info might also be of interest to you
http://forum.ncixus.com/forums/index.php?mode=showthread&msg_id=2227062&threadid=2227062&forum=103&product_id=50895&msgcount=5&overclockid=0#msg2227062

I know you've been through several of these drives, but looking in Google makes me think many of them may be affected from the factory, so you may want to think about another drive model or see if there is any firmware updates that might help

[Dark Mantis]

Yes there have been a lot of faulty drives in the past months. As I mentioned before my WD Black SATA3 6GB/s drives work fine on there with SMART enabled.

[IsLNdbOi]

Just one thing springs to mind you are using the SATA3 cables that came with the board aren't you ?

No, I'm using different SATA3 cables.  I don't like having extra cable clutter so I bought cables that are only long enough to reach from each drive to the SATA port it's connected to.

The other SATA3 drive I have is a WD RE4-GP.  I went through three of those drives until I got one that worked, but the problems I had with that drive are different.

[Dark Mantis]

Are you sure the cables are SATA3 supportive ?

[IsLNdbOi]

Yes.  This is the cable I'm using for both the Intel 160GB G2 SSD and the 600GB VelociRaptor:
http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=34_348_831&products_id=28360

My WD RE4-GP is connected via a hard drive dock built into my case that has its own integrated SATA cable.

[Dark Mantis]

Those cables certainly seem to meet the requirements.