Hello

I have a problem that is driving me a little mad.

Abit AV8 MB - Via chipset. Hitachi 160Gb IDE system drive.

I have a dual boot PC running Windows 2000 and XP. Everything was OK until I replaced 2 Hitachi 80Gb sata 150 hard disks with 2 Seagate 250Gb sata 300 (partitioned as 3 79Gb drives), for more space.

After fitting the Seagate HDDs I am unable to get them out of PIO mode in Windows 2000, they are OK in XP!!, the Hitachi HDDs were OK on both systems. So the hardware and Seagates are OK.

I have tried every VIA driver set I can get hold of, I have Googled and tried every Registry suggestion, device manager operation/deletion I have found.

But all I ever get in Windows 2k device manager is "DMA if available" "Current transfer mode PIO"

What is the difference between the Hitachi and the Seagate (Jumper set to 150 mode) that messes up Windows 2k use? Both systems are using the same VIA chipset driver package. It must be a driver issue!!???

Any suggestions greatfully received.

First question: is the performance of the hard drives being impacted by being in PIO mode?

Second question: are there any settings in the BIOS related to the SATA ports that might be involved?

A thought: your board might be one of the few that does NOT automatically do so well with "SATA II" drives, and the drives require a jumper of some sort so the controller does a better job of handling them.

For what I know, there are no PIO or DMA settings for SATA drives. If I'm not wring, these settings are valid only for IDE drives.

My SATA-II Hitachi drive on the other PC, using Win XP Pro, is set to IDE compatible mode in the BIOS - so it is set to UDMA Mode in Device Manager.

ooops

Thanks for your replies

Yes they are running about 10%

Not as far as I can tell + they are in DMA mode in XP.
The problem is in Windows 2000 alone.
Hitachi SATA OK - Seagate not.

The Seagate drive jumpers are set to 150 mode and the motherboard/hardware is working in DMA mode in Windows XP.

More thoughts: have you tried getting rid of Via drivers altogether in W2k?

Does it seem possible that a reinstall of W2k might help? [Probably not the best option, but a thought].

Yes I have tried it with only the Microsoft drivers, and I will try a clean 2000 install.

Somehow I don't think it will work - seems to be a Seagate/SATA II/Windows 2000 incompatibility.

Actually I don't think there is going to be anyway round this problem!!!!
Happy to be proved wrong though.

I would like to try a different make of drive and see if that helps.

Actually, other brands of SATA II drives will also give you the same problem. That VIA SATA controller does not support any of the advanced SATA features at all. And the only reason why the old 80GB Hitachi drives worked on your system is because those particular drives weren't native SATA drives at all -- but instead, they were PATA drives with a SATA bridge chip.

I guess you know about the 137 GB limit issue with Windows 2000. I've forgotten the details but as I recall you need at least SP3 and a registry zap to overcome it.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098

Thanks, I have already used the "EnableBigLBA" registry mod.

RJL65 you are correct the Hitachi drives are IDE with a bridge chip.


I have managed to get around the problem

Although I don't want to use RAID, just as an experiment I enabled the SATA RAID controller in the BIOS and installed the VIA RAID driver package.

I now have 2 SATA RAID drives listed in device manager, and although Nero Info tool still lists them as DMA - off, they are performing OK in the Cache - Test all hard disk speeds section of Nero Burning Rom (95,086KB/s)

So although maybe not the correct way of doing it, it does mean I can use the Seagates with my system.

Thanks for all the input.

No PIO there, the problem is related to the mobo/chipset combination...