GA-X58A-UD7 Rev 1.0 With WD20EARS HDD

[Court]

Hi everyone,

I'm having major issues with the above. I have been running my motherboard fine for the last 5 months but I decided to buy two Western Digital HDD 2TB for media storage. As soon as I connected them I have been plagued by problems with the Bios hanging, and Win7 sometimes see the drives and then it doesn't.

I've tried all SATA ports even in IDE & AHCI Mode, has anyone else had this problem with there MB?

[absic]

Hi,
I don't think it is the Mobo that is the problem but the Western Digital Hard drives. I have 2 640 GB SATA3 Caviar Black and they have caused me all kinds of problems! 

[Dark Mantis]

The Western Digital Greens are not good for using as boot drives, this is well documented. They tend to lack the performance characteristics for today's modern systems. The only suggestion I can make other than replace the one you use for booting is to go into the BIOS and enable a hard drive boot delay and see if that will help. They just don't initialise fast enough.

[Court]

Thanks peeps, I forgot to say that the only other drive left plugged in is my WD74GB Raptor which has the Win7 64bit OS on. I tired removing all the drives but the Raptor and 1 of the 2TB Green Drives. And still no joy. 

I have got off the phone to WD UK and they have been helpful trying to asses the problem, as they have seen how many of there drives I own they have now escallated it up to the senior engineer.

[Dark Mantis]

When you have reached a suitable outcome please post it here so it might be of use to members in the future.

[Tidosho]

I've got one of these drives, and a 15EARS 1.5TB drive. The problems here are definitely spin-up delay, set a delay of about 3 to 4 seconds, I had this with older drives years ago. I use mine as archive drives, and WD say they're Advanced Format drives so they need to be calibrated, I had big problems cloning one to the other under XP, as XP required the calibration, but Win 7 managed fine. Once I cloned it under Win 7, I could use it under XP, but transfer rates seem slower.

Look on the label, it has a warning, and mentions the Paragon software you need to use. So you don't need to rip your drive out, I've copied it here:

Advanced Format Drive. To achieve full performance:

*Windows XP, multi partition and cloning software users - use WD Align software available on www.wd.com/advformat.

*Windows XP, single partition - Set jumpers 7-8 prior to installation or use WD Align software.

*All other OS configurations - Drive is ready for use as is

They take a while spinning up, it's to prevent damage to the motor driver (smooth) chip. If it spins up too fast, the chip gets high resistance, causing it to get hot, decreasing its lifespan. A motor needs high current to get to optimum RPM under the load of the platters and air resistance between the arms & heads, then it tails off.

[Court]

I'll give that delay a try tonight, I'll have to query Scan as the drives was shipped to me next day in just bubble wrap.

Cheers everyone, I'll keep you posted

[Tidosho]

As a note, I tested my 15EARS and 20EARS side by side in a quiet room. The 20EARS takes a lot longer to start up than the 15EARS. I'm buying one as a boot drive in the next couple weeks for use with my EP45-UD3R system, so I'll let you know if I have the same issue.

[Court]

Well I tried everything so the drives are going back to Scan tomorrow. I dod on the off chance brought another from Scan, It arrived on Friday.

And would you believe it it worked, so I can only suggest that the other two was fault.

On the other note I now have update my Bios to F7.

[mariokil]

Hi Court,
I have exactly the same Mobo and hdd in RAID 0. It works fine without any problem. I'm using SSD Vertex 2 as a system.

[Dark Mantis]

Well I tried everything so the drives are going back to Scan tomorrow. I dod on the off chance brought another from Scan, It arrived on Friday.

And would you believe it it worked, so I can only suggest that the other two was fault.

On the other note I now have update my Bios to F7.

After all that what is a BIOS update Glad you got it sorted though.