UNFORGiVEN09

Hey,

so connecting my 1TB sata drive to my VT6421 SATA/RAID controller didn't work out too well. Performance is abysmal and transfer mode was being shown as Multiword DMA 2. The ESTOOL Samsung utility kept saying the drive had a bad sector as it would fail on a basic surface scan so I thought the drive might be faulty.

So I got a SATA > IDE converter and connected everything up;

Sata drive > sata cable from drive into sata port on converter > converter female IDE port into motherboard male IDE port.

Windows was now showing the mode as UDMA 2 and the ESTOOL utility actually passed a diagnostics test (including surface scan with no erors!). I read that anything above UDMA 2 requires the use of 40-pin 80-conductor cable.

I know I already have a cable like that as my original internal IDE drive was able to run at UDMA 5. The Samsung drive supports up to UDMA 6 but I'm guessing the reason I could not get past UDMA 2, even with the drive connected to the IDE port on my motherboard was because I did not use the required cable. Changing the transfer mode in the ESTOOL utility to UDMA 5 didn't work as it still said UDMA 2 was selected.

Connecting the converter into the SATA/RAID controller's parallel port gives me UDMA 5 on that drive but ESTOOL won't detect the drive with that configuration and I feel the performance could be a little better using alternate options.

Instead of the converter going into my motherboard, could I connect it to a gender changer that has pins on both sides? So my setup would be as follows...

Sata drive > sata cable from drive to converter > converter's female IDE connecter > gender changer > 40-pin 80-conductor IDE cable > motherboard's IDE port.

Would using the above setup make the ESTOOL utility save the changes to UDMA 5 instead of still saying that UDMA 2 was selected? And would Windows then allow UDMA 5 for this drive?

What I'm planning to do use my orig. drive as master and 1TB drive as slave (connected to same IDE cable) which goes into the system's primary IDE channel. Or should I connect the drives both with 80 coductor cables to seperate IDE channels (i.e. IDE primary and IDE secondary, and have my DVD drives connected through the parallel port on my SATA controller?

Also one further thing... when the 1TB is connected in different configurations, the following happens in ESTOOL;

When connected to SATA/RAID controller (with no converter of course as it isn't needed), mode changes are shown as SATA300 or SATA150, abysmal performance in Windows regardless of chosen mode.

When connected to SATA/RAID controller parallel port (with converter), drive not found in ESTOOL as mentioned but works in Windows w/ UDMA 5.

When connected to the mobo's IDE port using converter but no 80 conductor cable, mode changes show as ATA33/66/100/133 in ESTOOL (changing them does not appear to work or be "applied"), shows in Windows as UDMA 2.

raptor_pa

How about a pic of the adapter you are using?

UNFORGiVEN09

Sorry, here it is;

http://img223.imageshack.us/i/r013907201.jpg/

UNFORGiVEN09

Thanks in advance for your help.