Help w Sata configuration

[Nocifer]

Hi, I want to ask sth about Sata drives. I have a P5WD2 mobo, which supports Sata2, and 2 Sata2 HDDs. First of all, running some tests, I found that my drives are configured for udma5 instead of udma6, and I can't seem to find a way to fix this. Second, I thought Sata2 enables 3gb/s transfers..? :? If not, then what's the dif between sata and sata2? And if it does, then how?

 

[kamiri]

What kind of drives are they? Some of the 3gb/s drives are jumpered for 1.5gb/s from the factory. A lot of the Seagate drives come this way and all you have to do to enable 3gb/s on them is remove the jumper. I can't help you on the udma issue, nor do I know if that even matters.

 

[Nocifer]

Boot drive is a WD 200gb, and second drive is a Seagate 320gb, both Sata2 as I said. When I asked about the 3gb t. rate, I meant that udma5 is supposed to have 133mb/s and udma6 150mb/s transfers, so what's the deal with the 3gb/s? Even if I manage to set the udma mode to 6, it's still a huge difference between 150 megs and 3 gigs (or a jumpered 1.5, whatever). Also, if udma mode doesn't matter and my drives are running at 3g (or 1.5) anyway, what's the point in the OS reporting the udma mode?

 

[ara]

i think the marketing for SATA is confusing you: 1.5 gb/s is in fact 150 MB/s whereas DMA6 is 100mb/s (whilst i thought it was 133) and UDMA5 is 66 (while i though (until replying) that it was 100)

Wikepedia Article

although 66 is being passed by many hard drives now, 100 is still not being passed (apart from burst speeds) so 150 and 300 (sata I and II) are not really nescessary for another few generations (in my opinion)

if both your hard drives are sata, why does the dma speeds matter to you though? like i said: the gbps rating is simply there to make things sound better (they are in fact 150 MB/s and 300MB/s)

SATA article on Wikipedia

Ara

 

[ara]

oh yeah: just to clear up: Gb/s is Giga-bits per second whereas MB/s is megabytes per second

Ara

 

[kamiri]

I'm not sure if your BIOS has settings like mine, but I can specify whether my drives act as IDE or SATA or both. If testing tells you that they are dma then I would think that either you need to double check your BIOS settings or make sure you have the latest chipset and sata drivers from here >> Asus Downloads <<

 

[Nocifer]

I have my BIOS all set, thnx Kamiri. Ara, you really made my day. Damn marketing! Never thought of gigaBITS in hdd transfer rates, so I was dumbstruck cuz I thought, wow, 3 gigaBYTES per second.. what's the problem with MY drives? :roll: