Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Wiki for discussing P35/IHC9(R)/SATA issues set up

From: Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu_at_FreeBSD.org>
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 01:57:20 -0800
On Tue, Nov 06, 2007 at 04:37:24AM -0500, Aryeh M. Friedman wrote:
> yes btw due to god knows what reason the patch renumbered ad8 to ad6

That can be discussed in the future.  ATA device numbering (that is to
say, the X of an "adX" device) has always been a little odd in my
experiences.  Turning on or off a ATA interface (PATA or SATA) seems to
adjust the numbering, regardless of ATA_STATIC_ID or not.  It's likely
that I do not understand what the kernel option does.

> > 1) Have you verified that the SATA150-limiting jumper on your Seagate
> >    drive has been removed?  SATA300 drives from Seagate come from the
> >    factory with that jumper connected, limiting the drive to SATA150.
> >   
> 
> I will check but:
> 
> 1. I was unaware of this "feature"
> 2. I didn't see any jumpers when I installed it

The jumper is very tiny, usually gray, and on the back of the drive next
to the SATA interface port.  It's documented both on the drive itself,
and in the product manual for the Barracuda 7200.10 -- see Section 3.2:

http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/desktop/Barracuda%207200.10/100402371h.pdf

The default (SATA150) is chosen because of known issues with SATA300 on
older nForce chipsets.  Seagate chose to limit the drives to SATA150 via
a jumper, so that they would work on all machines, regardless of buggy
or incompatible chipsets.

> > 2) Do you happen to be using a PATA-to-SATA adapter on the DVD drive?
> >   
> 
> It is native SATA (300)
> > 3) If No to #2, are you sure that the ICH9 does SATA300 with ATAPI
> >    devices?  Does the mainboard BIOS even support it for ATAPI?
> 
> Mobo has ATAPI I am not sure about the IHC issue though... will look it
> up and get back to you.

My motherboard also has SATA ATAPI support -- but my DVD drives are
SATA150.  I have never seen a SATA300 ATAPI drive.  Now, that said -- I
*have* seen Fujitsu hard disks which claimed to be SATA300 capable but
weren't.  It turned out to be false advertising; the SATA chip they used
on their drives did not support SATA300, yet their product manual and
ads said it did.

This may be the case with your DVD drive as well.  I would not put it
past a manufacturer to put incorrect information in their product specs.

Also, you do realise that having a SATA150 drive on your SATA bus does
not mean that the entire bus runs at 150MB/sec, correct?  It's not like
SCSI.  So there should be no performance hit having a single SATA150
drive on SATA controller also filled with SATA300 devices.

In the future, take proper time to thoroughly read about the hardware
you purchase, or at a bare minimum, read the labels manufacturers put on
their products.  :-)

However: your PATA ports becoming unusable/disabled when you enable SATA
in the BIOS could be either a BIOS bug (or "feature") or a FreeBSD bug.
I would not put it past Gigabyte to have a BIOS bug (they are very
well-known for having such, but are also pretty good about fixing
such problems).  Have you tried a BIOS upgrade on your P35 since you
got it, or looked at the BIOS changelog?

I do not have an ICH9 board to help confirm or deny -- I can purchase
one if needed, and/or send it to Xin Li free of cost.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                    jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                           http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                      Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.                  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
Received on Tue Nov 06 2007 - 08:57:37 UTC

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