GA-EX58-UD5 and problems with SATA controllers

[Videoopp]

I am having problems with my SATA hard drives going off line intemitantly on my GA-EX58-UD5 motherboard. They usually come back within ten seconds or so, but as I am trying to use this as a video editing work station, it is rather anoying!

I have updated to the latest BIOS and SATA Controller drivers with no improvements.

Is it normal for the SATA drives to show up in the "Safely remove hardware" window? On other computers, only external devices show up here....

Any ideas on how to make my system more stable?

Thanks


Windows Vista Ultimate 64 with SP1 Build 6001
650W PS
6 G Memory

 

[bilbat]

Are these by any chance Seagates? Known firmware problems...

 

[Videoopp]

Yes, They are all Seagates.

Hmmm I have been using Segates in all my other builds for the last 8 years with no problems like this.... I think that A couple of these drives were pulled from abother system and they did not demonstrate this kind of issue in that system... What kind of Known firmware problems are you talking about?

 

[bilbat]

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-firmware-7200.11-drives-bricking,6885.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-500gb-1tb-firmware-update,6867.html

 

[Videoopp]

Thanks for the links. The information was good to know about, but I believe that my problem is unrelated. This does not happen after a power off. This happens while the computer is still running.

If I was seeing a pattern, it seems to happen most often when the computer has been idle for a bit and I sit down to start working on a program that may still be running. Hard drives that are being used by the program, (other than the system drive) go off line, as though they were external drives that had been unplugged. After about 30 seconds they come back on line on their own, complete with the pop-up windows that you might expect to see after plugging in an external hard drive.

Again, I have to wonder, why are internal drives controlled by a internal controller, acting like external drives? Is this normal for Gigabyte SATA controllers? (It's been a while since I built a Gygabyte system)

Frank

 

[bilbat]

Perhaps the link was not descriptive enough - that's pretty much the same way my 1.5 behaved before the update -

A - would 'fall asleep', sometimes giving errors, sometimes not, recovering with a distict 'click' like the heads unlocking;
B - would fail to activate at a reboot, showing an error message in the GSATA BIOS loader segment;
C - (the last straw) started giving chkdsk errors at win (any version - random) startup;

however, I never got the 'new drive plugged in' message, but may just be peculiar to the 58...

 

[Videoopp]

Thanks for persisting with me.... I checked all of the serrial numbers against the Segate utility and they cameback with the message that these drives were not effected....

So I guess I am still lost. Faulty controller? Need a higher rated PS?

You think if I just swapped out with some non-segate drives that I would be OK?

 

[bilbat]

Ahhh - if DriveDetect.exe's serial number and the web-site's list tells you that your drives are OK, I'd tend to believe it - they've 'fessed up' pretty well to address this problem; and, barring that problem, a SATA drive is, pretty much, a SATA drive. The occasional USB/FireWire enclosure, or router NAS might take umbrage at a drive over a TB, but, otherwise, if any work, they should all work!

Let's start with a few questions:
How many drives, plugged in where? You mentioned the G_SATA controller; if there is no overriding reason (like a bank of RAIDs using up the ICH10R ports) to use them, first thing I'd try is to move them to the Intel ports - they're faster (+10-15% in RAID), and better supported.

I do have a bank (6) of RAID on my ICH, and am so forced to use the G_SATA (jMicron) controller; it (with AHCI and SMART enabled) does show up in the 'unplug device' dialogue - I never really thought about it (knowing that I wasn't going to unplug it), but I'd guess it's there to support 'hot-swapping'.

How are the following set in BIOS?

"Integrated Peripherals" page:

"SATA RAID/AHCI Mode"
"SATA Port0-3 Native Mode"
"USB Storage Function"
"Onboard SATA/IDE Device (GIGABYTE SATA2 Chip)"
"Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode (GIGABYTE SATA2 Chip)"

 

[Videoopp]

Switching all drives to the ICH ports has solved all issues. I have been running for over a day now with no problems.

Thanks for your help!

Frank