SATA Drive Indicator

rc94590

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Nov 7, 2003
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I have an ASUS P4C800 motherboard and Maxtor SATA-150 hard drives. The drive indicator lamp on the case is plugged into the IDE indicator connector on the motherboard. The drive indicator lamp does not light up when a SATA drive is running. I assume that the motherboard connector only works for IDE drives. I like to know when a drive is operating. Is there a hardware or software work-around that will indicate when a serial drive is running? If software is required, I would prefer a program that uses very little system resources.
 

rc94590

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Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion. I received no information with the case concerning the polarity of the indicator lamp leads. Can I damage anything by reversing the polarity? The reason I ask is because the ASUS manual says that the the LED will light up if any device is active on the IDE connectors, but the SATA hard drives do not connect to the IDE connectors, so possibly the cable is connected correctly but the IDE indicator circuit cannot detect activity on the serial connectors.

Thanks for your help,

Richard
 

rc94590

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Hi,

I read where I couldn't hurt anything by having the wrong polarity and turned the connector over as you suggested. The lamp works fine now. Incidentally, the machine came from Advantage Computers with the cable connected wrong, so I guess they have the Noobe.

Thanks again

Richard

Addendum:

After a long wait, I received the following information from ASUS:

"Dear customer:
Thank you for contacting ASUS Customer Service. My name is Alex, and I would be assisting you today. Sorry for our later reply , The IDE LED only can support IDE device. it can't support SATA device. Thank you for using ASUS products and services."

Since the LED obviously does work when a SATA drive is reading or writing (as long as the cable is plugged into the board correctly), I think that the folks at Tom's Hardware know more about ASUS motherboards than the ASUS Customer Service Division.

Richard

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by rc94590 on 11/10/03 12:04 PM.</EM></FONT></P>