Hi,

Recently I've added a WD3200JB HD (IDE 8MB buffer) to my 5-years old computer. It is an 1.2Ghz AMD, ASUS A7A266. My primary HD is a 40GB IBM HD and I used to have a WD800JB as well (replaced it with the new 320GB).

The problem is that the new 320GB drive works _very_ slow. HD Tech tests show read time of ~2MB/s. chkdisk is OK, no bad sectors. The drive is formatted in NTFS and I'm using Windows XP SP2.

I think its some kind of a compatibility issue with my BIOS. The BIOS is configured AUTO for both Master and Slave devices but when I look at the 'Primary IDE Channel Properties' I see that 'Device 1' 'Current Transfer Mode' is 'PIO Mode' although the Transfer Mode is set to 'DMA if available'.

Second screen when I boot shows a strange thing. It seems as if it doesn't recognize my Slave drive: 'Pri. Slave Disk: None'. When I go into the BIOS it recognizes the HD but the 'Maximum LBA Capacity' is '8455MB' whereas for the 40GB IBM drive it is 41???MB. Is there a limitation issue here?

Do I need to update my BIOS? If so maybe it's better to put the HD as an external one (USB) and not risk BIOS update failure (never done that before and I've heard it's quite dangerous)?

Thanks a lot for any help.

Asus boards flash good. Little need to worry. That board is a little older and I noticed one of the bios updates added LBA support (48 bit) So yea looks like the newest bios should be in your future. Use the WD software (get it off their web site) I think it's up to some rev of version 11 to prepare the drive. I don't know what version bios you have right now.

I just order the WD RaptorX 150 gig HD 10,000 RPM, I got a greta price on it, 279.00USD. I hope it works well with the rest of my new system. As for the 320gig, sometimes the BIOS doesn't recognize a much larger HD than you had origionally.

did you double-check to make sure the jumpers on both drives (and position on the IDE cable) are correct?

You be fine.

1. The jumpers are OK. No problem there. So does he IDE cable.
2. Regarding the BIOS, I have Revision 1006 and it does seem as if I should flash it. I saw: http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~leeey/a7a266/ and it gave me a lot of information. I don't understand though, if intalling 'ALi's UltraIDE driver, version 4.0.0.8' alone will not solve my problem. Do I need to flash the BIOS as well?

I don't even see 1006. that must be pre WW2. (1009 is the oldest they even show) 1011 is the first version that added lba 48 bit support. The website you posted even says that. Go to the Asus site to get your updates. Without 1011 or later that large a disc just ain't gona work right. These bios files are from 2003. It's an older board and drives that large were not around very much. This pic is from the asus site. Don't mess around with other bios web sites.

An ide driver lets the board talk to the drive, not change the basic bios functions needed to address large drives. The bit string just was not wide enough. Back then these mobo companies had no idea of the size and power of devices that would evlolve in the future. Remember Gates saying 64 meg of memory would be all anybody would ever need

Or was it 640KB?

Woot! Dos forever!
Gui's are for wusses!

LOL I don't remember. Can you picture xp on 640K or 64 meg Look at Alan dust's off 2 gig of Cosair for his new system That should rock.
Dos should be required on all systems.

Tin: Something else that was making me think all night and at the store today (who said I don't care) Ditch those fancy second stringer ide drivers. You want the time tested, mother approved microsoft date 2001 ide drivers. One thing they sort of did right and have not touched in all these years.

XP on 64MB ive done it, not nice

" Off Topic" Hi Mr. Brownstone, It seems reading your signature the only difference in your system and mine with be the HD. I bought the RaptorX 150Gig. other than that its almost the same. Either we both made good choices,
or I stole the specs from your sig.

I feel your pain! I've run XP on 192MB and its still not pretty

I just went for the best and most future proof components i could afford, im hoping to upgrade to 2Gb of ram in the next 6 months or so either going for another 2x sticks of what i have which at todays prices will cost me £70 or 2x sticks of 1GB which will cost me around £140 for good stuff, im also hoping to add a mid range sound card such as an Audigy 4 which go for about £40 at the moment, and ofcourse more hard drives you can never have enough space! all my systems combined come to 1.06TB but its still not enough!

Since we both are going to have the same MOBO, I have only 1 HD (WD RaptorX) I want to add another but the ones I have are IDE and I would like to add another SATA, will this mobo support another SATA HD with an addon card.

personally i would stick my SATA drives and opticals on the board itself then stick any extra IDE HDD's on an add on card, this is ofcourse if you're already using up the boards IDE controllers. This is a high end board and i would have thought it should support a multitude of various different add on cards be it SATA or IDE without problem but i'd go and check out the ASUS forums for piece of mind

Yes the board can connect 6 SATA devices. I will run the RaptorX with another WD 80GIG HD 8mbs of cache HD for filing and storage.