GA-MA785GT-UD3H - configuring SATA drives (non-RAID)

[xprezons]

I have this board set up with 2 SATA drives with the following settings.

Am I right in believing that the data transfer would happen at IDE rates? How do I set it up to so each drive works at SATA speeds? I don't want to set up a RAID configuration.

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OnChip IDE Channel            [Enabled]
OnChip SATA Controller        [Enabled]
OnChip SATA Type            [Native IDE]
x OnChip SATA Port 4/5 Type    IDE

Thanks in advance.

[absic]

Hi there,

Your PC configuration looks fine and I shouldn't worry too much about the speed transfer as you will be getting SATA speeds.

It is a bit confusing, when you see your SATA HDD's labelled with IDE and also when you look in BIOS and see the old IDE terms of Master and Slave being applied but the reality is, that the naming conventions in BIOS for HDD's just haven't changed from the days of IDE.

[xprezons]

Thank you very much absic115 for clarifying that these are really running in SATA mode. Seriously, mixing up old terms with new makes it a bewildering combination.

Apologies for the delay in acknowledging your help. Really appreciate your good work.

[absic]

No worries and pleased to have been able to help and I have to agree that the way of identifying the SATA controllers as Native IDE can be very confusing.

[Dark Mantis]

Yes, I agree as far as I am aware it is only Gigabyte who labels them like this.

[xprezons]

I saw a related question on another post for a different board and it got me thinking again on this but didn't want to hijack that discussion.

So, is there much difference in running a SATA controller in IDE mode vs AHCI mode .. esp in speed terms?

@absic115 I know you said it'd be working at SATA speeds, but the idea of using calling it IDE in any way when its actually SATA isn't sinking in at all  

I'm using Fedora 13 x86_64 OS. Curious to know if anyone has tried this on Linux (I understand that the latest kernel supports AHCI natively)? Would there be any noticeable transfer speed difference due to native command queueing in situations like video editing etc? I'm unable to try it out just yet till I can back up my data onto an external drive.

I understand this setting could come handy when connecting eSATA drives due to the hot plug feature.

I was thinking of setting the options on the mobo as below:

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OnChip IDE Channel            [Enabled]
OnChip SATA Controller        [Enabled]
OnChip SATA Type            [AHCI]
x OnChip SATA Port 4/5 Type    IDE

http://download.gigabyte.ru/manual/mb_manual_ga-ma785gt-ud3h_e.pdf Link to Manual here if you fancy reading it .. Section 2-6, pg 49.

 

[absic]

Hi,

not sure how AHCI works on the Linux platform but running Windows there is no real improvement in speed between AHCI and IDE. The only real advantage is the Hot-Swap ability.