Sata 3 vs Sata 2 problems possible?

[xen111]

Recently I have had issues in Linux between a 780G/SB700 motherboard (Sata 2) and a tiny mSata disk (Transcend something 16GB) that while being extremely slow (14MB/s writes) should not really cause the system to hang for 2 minutes or more while IO was blocking to it.

The Linux kernel has a lot of IO queue issues that are not getting solved although they do try now a bit.

So I thought it would be just Linux. Now on another AM2+ motherboard with 785G chipset and Windows 10, and a Scorpio Black 2.5" 7200rpm Sata 3 drive, I experience the same kind of issues.

Call it "shit". Windows will hang for as much as 20-30 seconds while doing the simplest of tasks. You may press a button or click a field to input some text in a webbrowser, the webbrowser needs to read or write a few files, and the entire thing blocks for 20-30 seconds and you go out of your mind.

It is completely unacceptable and ruins everything. I mean there is much talk about SSDs but harddrives were never a problem to me before and now they are.

I have *never* in the past experienced issues such as this. From my first 80286 from IBM with 20MB harddisk to Windows 95 and XP with eventually maybe 10GB, to 160GB drives and 2.5" drives and one SpinPoint F1 of 660 (or 640, whatever) and even... well that's when the troubles began.

My recent 500GB ST500LM012 did not experience itself but in conjunction with the tiny mSata, it did. I have a bunch of 1TB ST1000LM024's and... no issue on a AM3 motherboard apparently (760G) and on this system too early to shout. Mainly at this point I am worried about that Scorpio and this AM2+ motherboard.

I have a AM2 motherboard soon with an even older Sata controller (likely) and I'm worried about these issues in Windows 10 predominantly.

Earlier I had a older laptop 2530p from HP with the stock 160GB hdd, and it experienced extreme slowdowns the likes of which you have never seen before: file transfers crawled down to below 500k/bs (effectively creeping to 0) when the rest of the system would still respond - a bit. Or games (Dosbox games) would cause the system to hang completely.

This was also in Windows 10. I prefer using Windows 10 if I do use Windows. 7 and 8 seem both of the last century or before. But thus far I have had almost nothing but performance issues.

Is there any reason this would be due to a Sata 3 drive running on Sata 2 motherboard?

Can it be due to missing drivers or ancient drivers in Windows 10 for the motherboard chipsets?

I would prefer more answers than "Yeah it might".

 

[johnbl]

A SATA 3 drive is backward compatible with a sata 2 port. That being said, it does not mean it is backward compatible with the bugs in SATA support in old BIOS versions and old bugs in old SATA 2 drivers.

Be sure to update the BIOS and the SATA chip drivers to the most current ones that your motherboard supports.
Also, be sure to update the firmware of that actual devices if you can.

 

[xen111]

I think most of the time there are no new drivers for Windows 10 but I am not sure. Of course there is the AMD Catalyst SATA package, I think I did install it in an earlier attempt. I would have to check back on that. But my main question now is:

is it possible to put a Sata 3 drive to a fixed Sata 2 mode?

Back in the day I had a drive of some 10GB that used an udma mode that gave conflict with the motherboard and made it really slow. The manufacturer had a tool that could fix the dma mode to something else and this fixed the problem. My girlfriend at the time even accused me of being bad with computers but then I solved it after all ;-).

I wonder if something these days exists too.

 

[johnbl]

you do not get these drivers from windows/microsoft, you get them from your motherboard vendor or the actual chip vendor for the chips on the motherboard. IE intel or amd for CPU chipsets drivers and the vendor of any extra SATA chip on the motherboard. Hopefully the OEM will have collected the proper driver and BIOS updates and put them on their website.

I think most of the time there are no new drivers for Windows 10 but I am not sure. Of course there is the AMD Catalyst SATA package, I think I did install it in an earlier attempt. I would have to check back on that. But my main question now is:

is it possible to put a Sata 3 drive to a fixed Sata 2 mode?

Back in the day I had a drive of some 10GB that used an udma mode that gave conflict with the motherboard and made it really slow. The manufacturer had a tool that could fix the dma mode to something else and this fixed the problem. My girlfriend at the time even accused me of being bad with computers but then I solved it after all ;-).

I wonder if something these days exists too.

 

[xen111]

Sure, perhaps I wasn't sure about that, but I do have these drivers even on my network disk. I was just wondering if you could answer the second question.

 

[johnbl]

if this is the question:
Can it be due to missing drivers or ancient drivers in Windows 10 for the motherboard chipsets?

windows 10 will have generic versions of drivers, it will never have custom versions that may be required for your particular motherboard. The custom versions depend on the version of the BIOS and the rev number of the actual chipset on the board as well as knowledge of how the motherboard designers decided to allocated resources on the board. The generic versions will often load using all of the default values, this often works well unless the motherboard designer changed some default for some reason.

Sure, perhaps I wasn't sure about that, but I do have these drivers even on my network disk. I was just wondering if you could answer the second question.

 

[xen111]

if this is the question:
Can it be due to missing drivers or ancient drivers in Windows 10 for the motherboard chipsets?

No no, I mean if there is a way to fix a sata 3 drive to a sata 2 mode the way it was possible with some drives for udma modes.

windows 10 will have generic versions of drivers, it will never have custom versions that may be required for your particular motherboard. The custom versions depend on the version of the BIOS and the rev number of the actual chipset on the board as well as knowledge of how the motherboard designers decided to allocated resources on the board. The generic versions will often load using all of the default values, this often works well unless the motherboard designer changed some default for some reason.

Alright I didn't know it was that important; I also assumed the generic drivers would be coming form the chipset manufacturer, which would in this case be AMD. Motherboards are often all identical in that sense and there are scarcely any custom drivers you can get; moreover they often point you to the drivers from the chipset manufacturer. E.g. the only real way to get nVidia drivers is from nVidia, and the only real way to get AMD Catalyst drivers is from AMD.

Once upon a time Gigabyte provided also good driver packages for my mainboard that were better than what AMD had but that was mostly the inclusion of drivers for HD Audio if I remember correctly. Their package made more work in one go.

But everyone just uses nVidia and AMD drivers for graphics cards, right. I installed the SATA drivers from AMD now again (15.7 or something, somewhat older, but their newer ones had issues back in the day when I downloaded it). I haven't tested yet.

 

[johnbl]

the sata 3 drive will use the highest mode that the controller supports. in this case sata 2.

you can make bios changes to change the mode that that sata 2 drive runs in. ie you can make it run slower by going to a IDE emulation mode. or add it to a raid array by some SATA raid mode.
normally you will want AHCI mode to be selected. if windows was installed while the BIOS sata mode was set to IDE you have to make a registry setting in windows before you switch it to AHCI mode so the proper driver will be installed and you can boot the system.
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/987378-how-to-switch-from-ide-to-ahci-without-repairingreinstalling-windows/

if this is the question:
Can it be due to missing drivers or ancient drivers in Windows 10 for the motherboard chipsets?

No no, I mean if there is a way to fix a sata 3 drive to a sata 2 mode the way it was possible with some drives for udma modes.

windows 10 will have generic versions of drivers, it will never have custom versions that may be required for your particular motherboard. The custom versions depend on the version of the BIOS and the rev number of the actual chipset on the board as well as knowledge of how the motherboard designers decided to allocated resources on the board. The generic versions will often load using all of the default values, this often works well unless the motherboard designer changed some default for some reason.

Alright I didn't know it was that important; I also assumed the generic drivers would be coming form the chipset manufacturer, which would in this case be AMD. Motherboards are often all identical in that sense and there are scarcely any custom drivers you can get; moreover they often point you to the drivers from the chipset manufacturer. E.g. the only real way to get nVidia drivers is from nVidia, and the only real way to get AMD Catalyst drivers is from AMD.

Once upon a time Gigabyte provided also good driver packages for my mainboard that were better than what AMD had but that was mostly the inclusion of drivers for HD Audio if I remember correctly. Their package made more work in one go.

But everyone just uses nVidia and AMD drivers for graphics cards, right. I installed the SATA drivers from AMD now again (15.7 or something, somewhat older, but their newer ones had issues back in the day when I downloaded it). I haven't tested yet.

 

[xen111]

the sata 3 drive will use the highest mode that the controller supports. in this case sata 2.

you can make bios changes to change the mode that that sata 2 drive runs in. ie you can make it run slower by going to a IDE emulation mode. or add it to a raid array by some SATA raid mode.
normally you will want AHCI mode to be selected. if windows was installed while the BIOS sata mode was set to IDE you have to make a registry setting in windows before you switch it to AHCI mode so the proper driver will be installed and you can boot the system.
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/987378-how-to-switch-from-ide-to-ahci-without-repairingreinstalling-windows/

Right now this is useful information. I have run into this many times.

Presently I am trying to install a game to see if the hangs still happen, but my computer refuses to read from the DVD drives.

I have 3 freaking external DVD drives. All of them now exhibit the same behaviour, of constantly starting and stopping to read. On another computer they work fine. I have *no clue* as to why this is happening. Maybe a reboot will fix it, but right now I have 3 DVD drives that all of them, all of a sudden, refuse to read any disk.

 

[xen111]

Sorry, that DVD thing issues was due to a lacking power supply on a USB hub / front ports ;-).

Windows 10 does not have issues with you switching your system to SATA modes of AHCI, IDE or RAID, I have found. You can switch it just fine without doing anything.

It's just that in Linux and on a RAID controller my harddisk seems to work fine, and in Windows it does not on those SB700/SB710 motherboards, now it works reasonbly fine on a nVidia nForce 570 motherboard (even older) although the system is still very sluggish (startup times are much slower than what I was used to on a Windows 7 system on basically the same motherboard with a slower harddisk!!!!!!!

I have never had such a slow Windows system, I can say. At least, not normally. My Windows 10 is at least 3-4 times slower on the same hardware (but with more RAM, possibly, and a faster harddisk) than was Windows 7 and even Windows 8!!!!!.

 

[xen111]

Also since some people report this as an issue between SATA II and SATA I, or 300 and 150, I now have the same between SATA III and SATA II and it is just a terrible shame that the drives do not support a jumper to limit their mode. I would limit them to 150 even!!!.

That's 1.5Gb/s bidirectional. That's at least 125GB/s if you don't do RAID.