WD Caviar Black SATA III issue

[vandist]

MOBO: Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3
RAM: Corsair Memory 8GB (2 x 4GB) Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz
Primary Drive: OCZ 120GB Vertex 3 Max IOPs (AHCI)
Secondary Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB (WD2002FAEX)(AHCI)
Asus GeForce GTX 560 Ti 900MHz (DirectCU II TOP)
LG BR (LG BH10LS38.AUAU 10x Internal BD-RW)
OS: win 7 64bit
(Cables used SATA 3)

I have the OCZ connected via SATA 3 in ACHI mode, the LG in SATA II with the controller set to ACHI.

When I connect the Caviar black into a SATA 3 (red port) it does not show up in the BIOS however windows will see it but more as an ejectable mass storage device.

When I connect the Caviar black in SATA 2 mode (black port) the bios recognises the drive as well as windows and it will not show as an ejectable storage device.

Can anyone shed light on this I'd like to get the Caviar black working on SATA 3? I thought these drives are SATA 3?

(actually does it make much odds to performance if it remains on a SATA2?)

 

[sminlal]

SATA II vs. III for hard drives is basically irrelevant because no hard drive has transfer rates that get anywhere near the bandwidth of SATA II, let alone SATA III. It's only for ultrafast devices such as the fastest SSDs where SATA II actually becomes a bottleneck and you need SATA III to get full performance.

You can download a paper from this Microsoft web page that tells you how to configure your SATA ports as removable or non-removable by configuring the Registry.

 

[vandist]

SATA II vs. III for hard drives is basically irrelevant because no hard drive has transfer rates that get anywhere near the bandwidth of SATA II, let alone SATA III. It's only for ultrafast devices such as the fastest SSDs where SATA II actually becomes a bottleneck and you need SATA III to get full performance.

You can download a paper from this Microsoft web page that tells you how to configure your SATA ports as removable or non-removable by configuring the Registry.

Thanks Simlal, so essentially just go with the SATA II configuration - I can live that.


Seems weird under SATA III the WD CB doesn't show in the BIOS - I'd still like to know why (for simply no other reason than to know )

 

[WyomingKnott]

Don't worry about showing as ejectable - it just means that the drive is connected to a port capable of hot-plugging. My system drive shows as ejectable. If I actually try to eject it, I get a message that it is in use. Duh.

 

[vandist]

Don't worry about showing as ejectable - it just means that the drive is connected to a port capable of hot-plugging. My system drive shows as ejectable. If I actually try to eject it, I get a message that it is in use. Duh.

I can live with that in SATA III it shows as ejectable in windows but it is weird it will not show up in the BIOS at all when using SATA III. Not even on the boot menu, it is only when I connect it to SATA II that I see the drive on the boot menu and in the BIOS.

I guess it doesn't really matter, works fine in SATA II


CrystalDiskMark sequential reads/writes is 146MB/s read and 145MB/s write - Seems about right

 

[vandist]

Don't worry about showing as ejectable - it just means that the drive is connected to a port capable of hot-plugging. My system drive shows as ejectable. If I actually try to eject it, I get a message that it is in use. Duh.

I can live with that in SATA III it shows as ejectable in windows but it is weird it will not show up in the BIOS at all when using SATA III. Not even on the boot menu, it is only when I connect it to SATA II that I see the drive on the boot menu and in the BIOS.

I guess it doesn't really matter, works fine in SATA II


CrystalDiskMark sequential reads/writes is 146MB/s read and 145MB/s write - Seems about right

 

[sminlal]

Don't worry about showing as ejectable - it just means that the drive is connected to a port capable of hot-plugging. My system drive shows as ejectable. If I actually try to eject it, I get a message that it is in use. Duh.

That's fine for the system drive because it always has open files so the system won't let you eject it. But it's not that hard to accidentally eject internal data drives that don't happen to be in use, which means you're hosed until you reboot. I've applied the Registry changes described in the paper I linked to in my first post in this thread and they've very nicely eliminated the "safely remove" icons for all my internal drives.

 

[Hawkeye22]

I don't see anything relevent in the bios changelog, but updating it may fix the problem.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/download.asp?Model=Fatal1ty%20Z68%20Professional%20Gen3&o=BIOS

 

[vandist]

I don't see anything relevent in the bios changelog, but updating it may fix the problem.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/download.asp?Model=Fatal1ty%20Z68%20Professional%20Gen3&o=BIOS

I have the most recent version (that's not Beta). I installed it so I can take out the pictures of Johnathan Wendel

I checked the change log for beta release and all it basically said is improved (made it work) mouse functionality in the UEFI, I'm so used to tab at this point I left it alone.

Maybe when Asrock release an Ivy bridge update and if consider installing the chip I'll then flash and see if that fixes the issue.

On a side note I emailed WD and they said:

"This problem could be due to a bad controller on your motherboard for the SATA 3 connector or out-date firmware for the BIOS (you can confirm this with Asrock).
Please contact Asrock to see if they can troubleshoot this issue as we are unable to troubleshoot your motherboard."

I went back and said my OCZ MI is working fine in SATA III, they said:

"We do not have a list of supported motherboards, so I can not tell you at this point why the SATA 3 is not working. Have you tried it on a different SATA 3 controller to ensure the SATA 3 functionality of the drive works at all?
Other than this, please contact Asrock as they can check your BIOS for any tweaks that needs to be done to ensure the drive works."

Suppose it doesn't hurt to ask Asrock and see what they have to say....


Thanks guys for the responses so far and if I get to the bottom of it I'll post on this thread.