SATA UDMA on P4C800D

[KrisMCool]

Just installed single WD360GD on ASUS P4C800 Deluxe at SATA_1 (ICH5 nonraid) with old WD800JB as secondary on Primary IDE. Everythig works, but I can't enable anything higher than UDMA-5 in the BIOS (P4C81014). There should be a choice of UDMA-6, right? According to "Sandra" and others. WD's Data Lifeguard Tools reports the drive set at ATA133, but doesn't allow a selection higher than ATA100. WD Tech is no help. ASUS Tech "blames" Microsoft / OS in their FAQ on the subject saying that a patch is in the works. Can't blame the OS for the lack of DMA settings if they don't exist in the BIOS first, or am I missing something? Any help would be appreciated. New to forums, so please bear with me.

Rig:
2.8 P4C @ 3430 stable
ASUS P4C800 Deluxe
1024MB Mushkin PC3200 @ 2-3-2-6
Rad 9700 Pro
WD360GD / WD800JB

 

[EeyoreX]

Perhaps the WD diagnostics are reporting on the chipsets ability to operate at ATA133 speeds. Western Digital does not manufacture drives to the ATA133 spec. AFAIK Maxtor is the only company that does this. You will notice that the specs for your hard drive show up to UDMA5/ATA100, so it would not be surprising that ATA133 isn't available as an option. Not to mention the fact, that it doesn't really matter. Current hard drives barely tax ATA66. So ATA133 is pointless anyhow. And, of course, the SATA drive will not be affected by these settings anyhow. Welcome to the forums!

\Dan

 

[KrisMCool]

Got a reply from WD. They said that the dive will operate at ATA150 regardless of the BIOS setting. I'm not sure I'm satisfied with that answer, even if the drive can't make use of that high setting. I've read about what you mentioned - that today's drives can't make use of that much bandwidth. But I'd still like to be able to set the drive at it's advertised settings. WD's prog dlgudma reads the current settings of both my SATA and PATA drives, but will only allow me to change to a setting of 33, 66 or 100. It was intended for their PATA drives and they don't offer one for their SATA drives. Oddly, the newer Data Lifeguard 11 won't work properly on my Raptor - pulls up thread errors and locks up when I choose Drive Information. But DLG 10 works. And ASUS' most recent BIOS revision removed the choice of UDMA-6, but they didn't explain why. Anyway, everything seems to be working quite well as of yet, and that's what's important. Thanks for the response.