SATA II showing up as UDMA 6, is this normal?

[ojas]

Hey people, need some info here.

I had an hard drive that was connected to the IDE interface. That drive is lying with fried firmware now thanks to my efforts. This was in august.

anyway got a shiny new SATA II drive, a WD Caviar Blue.

Hooked it up using sata. Of course, the controller was set to use the IDE interface in the BIOS. wanted to make sure NCQ was being used so i changed it to SATA later.

Before doing that, since i knew some *** would happen if i didn't do something to windows (hard drive wouldn't appear in bios/wouldn't boot, etc), so i checked and found this MS knowlege-base article. Led me to use MS fix it to do whatever (had to turn on something or change some values or install SATA drivers) and changed to SATA.

NO probs in the transition, everything went smooth, device manager showed the drives (DVD drive too) so that was fine.

Now, issue is that this is supposed to be a 3Gb/s interface right? HD Tune shows me that the active mode is UDMA 7 while supported is UDMA 6. Device manager tells me active mode is UDMA 6.

Now is this normal? Because from what i know UDMA is ATA related. And UDMA 6 is 133 Mbps and UDMA 7 is 512 Mbps.

According to HD tune's benchmark, i got a burst rate of 147 MB/s, max was 120 MB/s and avg was 106 MB/s. There was this random dip to 42 MB/s once in the benchmark.

So should i worry? Is anything wrong? I have a DG35EC mobo from intel, runs the G35 chipset, ICH8 controller that supports 4 SATA channels with "1 device per channel".

I've been thinking about getting an SSD in the next few months, so i want to know if i'll be able to fully use the 3Gbps bandwidth available.

Would a reinstall fix this and make windows use the 3 Gbps interface? Going to shift to 64-bit this month anyway so it's not a problem if it will.

Thanks,
Ojas

EDIT: HD tune shows the standard as ATA/ATAPI-8 - SATA II

 

[Hawkeye22]

I believe that is fine. The WD blue series spins at 5400rpm so throughput will be a bit slower than than the WD black series which spin at 7200rpm.

You did the right thing by using the MS Fix, otherwise you wouldn't be able to boot after you switched the bios to AHCI.

 

[ojas]

Eh? No no. The Greens spin at 5.4k Blues go around at 7200, so do blacks. Blacks have lower seek times. Raptors have a 10k rpm platter.

i'm not the one to settle for a 5400 RPM drive!

I doubt the speed of the disc would affect the interface speed. After all, older IDE drives also spun at 7200 RPM, and the newer 5400 RPM drives use SATA too.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Burst rate isn't as important as average transfer rate. Also, there aren't any hard drives out there that can saturate a sata-1 (1.5Gb/s) controller. Burst speed may top it for a few seconds, but rarely. You should have no problem with those sata-2 ports.

 

[RussK1]

I would back up important data and shutdown and enter bios - set SATA to AHCI and re-install OS. Your NCQ problem solved... once into widows, install the latest IRS driver for your chipset and you should be golden.

 

[ojas]

Burst rate isn't as important as average transfer rate. Also, there aren't any hard drives out there that can saturate a sata-1 (1.5Gb/s) controller. Burst speed may top it for a few seconds, but rarely. You should have no problem with those sata-2 ports.

True, but was planning on an SSD....

I would back up important data and shutdown and enter bios - set SATA to AHCI and re-install OS. Your NCQ problem solved... once into widows, install the latest IRS driver for your chipset and you should be golden.

Ah. Have set the SATA to AHCI already, so not a prob...IRS is Intel Rapid Storage right?
NCQ appears to be working...at least HD tune shows it as supported...i'm just wondering why it shows me UDMA on a SATA connection...(UDMA 6 is ATA-133, apparently)

So do a re-install you say? OK will do that that when i install 64-bit after my exams finish.


BTW, when i go to device manager, and right-click on "ATA Channel 0" (there are two channel 0s btw, one shows my drive and the other doesn't) then it shows me my drive, in the "advanced properties" section it says
Target ID 0
Device type ATA disk
Current Mode Ultra DMA Mode 6

and then there's a check box that is ticked and says "Use DMA".

Is this the problem? Shall i uncheck it?????

Additionally, when i open the "details" tab, the property selected is "device description" and the "value" is "IDE Channel".

However...i'm supposing windows should do it's stuff for me automatically on a re-install, and i shouldn't mess with that check box?

 

[RussK1]

True, but was planning on an SSD....


Ah. Have set the SATA to AHCI already, so not a prob...IRS is Intel Rapid Storage right?
NCQ appears to be working...at least HD tune shows it as supported...i'm just wondering why it shows me UDMA on a SATA connection...(UDMA 6 is ATA-133, apparently)

So do a re-install you say? OK will do that that when i install 64-bit after my exams finish.


BTW, when i go to device manager, and right-click on "ATA Channel 0" (there are two channel 0s btw, one shows my drive and the other doesn't) then it shows me my drive, in the "advanced properties" section it says
Target ID 0
Device type ATA disk
Current Mode Ultra DMA Mode 6

and then there's a check box that is ticked and says "Use DMA".

Is this the problem? Shall i uncheck it?????

Additionally, when i open the "details" tab, the property selected is "device description" and the "value" is "IDE Channel".

However...i'm supposing windows should do it's stuff for automatically me on a re-install, and i shouldn't mess with that check box?

If a re-install isn't a big deal for you then go for it... A nice clean windows is nice too. Just make sure prior to install make sure all of the appropriate settings are taken care of in the bios. Windows wll make it's changes...

DMA is ATA (well basically) and antiquated. DMA mode 0 being the slowest and mode 6 being fastest. A re-install will fix the problem...

 

[ojas]

Sure thing...will go for the re-install...knew that about DMA, which is what caused me to get worried in the first place

Thanks, will mark the best answer when it works!

 

[ttyp00]

Sure thing...will go for the re-install...knew that about DMA, which is what caused me to get worried in the first place

Thanks, will mark the best answer when it works!

I hate to rouse an old thread like this, but I'm seeing all the same things that you did. Additionally, the 'Enumerator' property in that Details tab of the SATA disk properties in Device Manager reads 'IDE.'

HD Tune says NCQ is supported, but I'm not sure if this means it is enabled or not. It might just mean it's supported.

Anyway, did you have any luck with anything or did you have to go through and reinstall?

 

[ojas]

Lol i had forgotten about the thread. No it still shows UDMA 5 as active. Two reinstalls, a new motherboard, an SSD and a GPT later.

But it doesn't make the slightest difference, My SSD is still churning out reads in excess of 200 MB/s.

Honestly i don't know what's the deal, just might be a backwards compatibility thing on older chipsets, or on the SATA 2 controller.

Currently i'm using the P43 chipset on the Intel DP43BF, boot mode is set to EFI, SATA is set to AHCI, running Win7 HP x64.

 

[RussK1]

Wow, a one year anniversary!

Are your drives formatted to GPT? Or MBR?

Perhaps the controller is limited...

What does AS SSD tell you? HERE and what does it tell you at the top left.

Example:

 

[ojas]

It says ms achci, using GPT. Don't know about ttyp0

And yeah i noticed too! almost exactly one year, eh?

I suspect it is indeed the controller, ICH10R.

BTW Russ is that Win 8?

 

[RussK1]

BTW Russ is that Win 8?

Yeah how'd ya know?

BTW, have you checked if there's a Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver? Instead of using Microsofts ahci driver?

Has your controller listed:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/confirm.aspx?httpDown=http://downloadmirror.intel.com/20110/eng/RST_11.6.0.1030_RAID_AHCI_driver_GUI_CLI_2012.10.11.zip&lang=eng&Dwnldid=20110&ProductID=3409&keyword=rst

 

[ojas]

Lol flat buttons

Thanks, but no difference to device manager or HD Tune.

BUT, for some reason, some programs (including some parts of windows) are detecting all the drives as SCSI now

But i don't think it's making an iota of a difference since i had about 4% higher numbers when the drive was fresh. T

The RST GUI is reporting stuff running as SATA-I (DVD drive) or SATA-II (SSD and HDD), so i guess its fine.

Anyway, thanks man. You get the best answer after all

 

[ojas]

Best answer selected by ojas.

 

[ojas]

BTW RussK, did you, by any chance, play America's Army 2? Like, in a clan and all?

 

[RussK1]

BTW RussK, did you, by any chance, play America's Army 2? Like, in a clan and all?

Negative mate.

you're getting the performance you're supposed to get atleast-

Performance
Sustained Sequential Read
Up to 270 MB/s
Sustained Sequential Write
Up to 130 MB/s

Thanks for the BA BTW. [:russk1]

 

[ojas]

Ah. There was this guy called russneck-of-tr, i thought maybe...

Yeah. Performance's dropped about 4% since i got it fresh, but then that happens. Plus this was drive C:, E: is more or less empty, might have been better there (less read writes, though i know it's not that simple).

haha, you've been the only one suggesting anything useful over the last year!

So merry Christmas!

 

[RussK1]

Ditto, Merry X-mas!

 

[joaohugo]

Hey guys... I was surfing the web searching for about about the same problem, UDMA. And ojas said that his drives are recognized as SCSI. It's interesting because I don't know what I did but I had mine (2 HDD. One Blue WD 250 and one old FUJITSU 120 taken from a laptop) both as SCSI. When that happened I run benchmarks and the speeds were amazing, Considering that OLD 5200rpm hdd I was in the 190-200 MB/s. Coping a file of 2GB between those two drives Windows 8 showed me 300 MB/s I was really happy.
My system drive is a REVODRIVE 3 and I came across a firmware upgrade so I tried my best to upgrade (REVODRIVE cannot be firmware upgraded if is the system drive) didn't went well, I lose the boot sector so I had to install Windows again. Guess what, I lose those SCSI recognition and now the 5200 RPM tests at 35MB/s and the other one 60MB/s.
I really want to discover what is going on with these SCSI recognition's.

If anyone has a clue on this, please tell me how to do it.

Thanks!