GA-X58A-UD3R AHCI Sleep Mode; SATA connections; Hibernation

[Joe_Buffalo]

Hi! I’ve recently completed building a computer with the following basic HW:

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
i7-930 2.8G Bloomfield
V8 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler RR-UV8-XBU1-GP
6GB RAM OCZ3G1600LV6GK
Hard Drive: WD1002FAEX
Optical Drive: Lite-ON IHAS424-98
XFX HD-585X-ZAFC HD5850
Win7Pro-64bit

The Optical Drive is connected to: Sata2_0
The front panel eSATA port on the case (Cooler Master HAF 932) is connected to: Sata2_1
The WD1002FAEX is connected to: GSata3_6

When I first installed Win7Pro-64bit all of the SATA ports (Sata2_0 thru Sata2_5; GSata2_8 & GSata2_9; GSata3_6 & GSata3_7) on the MB were set to the default IDE

I was led to believe that for the WD1002FAEX an AHCI would be better so on the 3rd day that my system was up I followed the procedure at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976 to enable AHCI for the Hard Drive WD1002FAEX without reformatting.

I have several questions:


1) Waking on a signal from the LAN does not appear to work correctly in Sleep mode. When I put my GA-X58A-UD3R in sleep mode so that my Home Server can wake up the new Machine and back it up at night the GA-X58A-UD3R only partly wakes up -- the fan's are running and the RAM lights appear to be on but the HD is not operating and the USB Mouse & Keyboard are not active -- and the GA-X58A-UD3R stays in that mode throughout the night and I have to do a reset in the morning.

At first I thought this was associated with some bad DRAM I had gotten but when I cleared up the bad DRAM this problem persisted. I then realized that this problem began AFTER I had switched the GSATA3_6 & GSATA3_7 from IDE to AHCI per the MS KB linked above. I have read that this problem had occurred in Win7 in 2009 with ACHI drives not getting up to speed in time but I was under the impression that had been fixed in Win7. Could this be the problem? Is it a BIOS problem? How should I fix it?

2) How should I set up my SATA ports on the MB? Assuming I fix the wake from sleep issue – should I leave my optical drive on SATA2_0 as an IDE? Should I move the HAF 932 front panel eSATA connection to GSATA2_8 or GSATA2_9 and set the Gigabyte SATA2 controller to AHCI?

3) Why don't I have a Hibernate option in shutting down the GA-X58A-UD3R? Can that be added in Win7Pro?

Thanks for your help and consideration

 

[the-ninth]

Hi,

Ad 2)

The sticky thread from Bilbat recommends to use the Intel SATA controller (SATA0-SATA5) instead of the Marvell Controller (SATA6/7):

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/275856-12-gigabyte-guide

I ran ATTO Disk Benchmark on my GA-X58A-UD3R with and SSD and also got slightly better results on the Intel controller.

However, contrary to the recommendation I decided to put DVD and eSATA on the Intel as well. I am not short of ports anyway and by disabling the other controllers the boot-up is a bit faster.

Ad 3)

Per default Win7 offers hybrid sleep, it goes into standby first and later automatically into hibernation. Go to the 'Power Options', 'Change Plan Settings' of your current plan, then select 'Change advanced power settings' and go for 'Sleep', and set 'Allow hybrid sleep' to 'Off' you will disable hybrid sleep and get the dedicated hibernate option in the shutdown menu.

Cheers, Robert