help with new SATA drive

msanthropy · 03-10-2005, 06:39 PM

Hi all,

I just bought a Seagate 80mb SATA drive, and because my motherboard (MSI 6389) doesn't have SATA support, I also bought a Promise SATA 150 TX2 Plus pci controller. My question is: how do I connect the LED cable, or rather, how do I know which one IS the LED cable! The specs for my particular motherboard are here:

http://support.gateway.com/s/MOTHERB...51314614.shtml

I'm not a total novice, but I don't have any experience with SATA drives or changing the LED connections. Can anyone help? Thanks!

TKD2 · 03-10-2005, 06:48 PM

Unless the Promise SATA controller has LED pins (which it probably does) you'll have to forget about an HDD activity light.
The SATA drive effectively has nothing to do with the mainboard now - it's purely an extension of the controller.

msanthropy · 03-10-2005, 06:55 PM

Thanks for the reply! The card does have four male LED pins on it. Is an activity light the only reason to connect this? If so, I'm not terribly concerned about it. I just want to get the drive installed. I was just concerned that there was some other need for it.

TwistedBard · 03-10-2005, 07:59 PM

Nope, that's the only reason. It is just so you know things are happening by looking at the pretty lights. More or less. :)

msanthropy · 03-11-2005, 12:35 AM

Man, that was totally effortless. My computer's running like lightning now. Thanks for the help!

03-10-2005, 06:39 PM	#1 (permalink)
msanthropy Registered User Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 9 OS: Win XP Home SP2	help with new SATA drive Hi all, I just bought a Seagate 80mb SATA drive, and because my motherboard (MSI 6389) doesn't have SATA support, I also bought a Promise SATA 150 TX2 Plus pci controller. My question is: how do I connect the LED cable, or rather, how do I know which one IS the LED cable! The specs for my particular motherboard are here: http://support.gateway.com/s/MOTHERB...51314614.shtml I'm not a total novice, but I don't have any experience with SATA drives or changing the LED connections. Can anyone help? Thanks!

03-10-2005, 06:48 PM	#2 (permalink)
TKD2 Registered User Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Leeds, UK Posts: 152 OS: XP/SuSE	Unless the Promise SATA controller has LED pins (which it probably does) you'll have to forget about an HDD activity light. The SATA drive effectively has nothing to do with the mainboard now - it's purely an extension of the controller. __________________ A64 Winchester 2.5GHz \| 2x512Mb Ballistix PC4000 \| 240Gb SATA Raid0/160Gb PATA \| Leadtek 6800GT \| MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum \| Win XP/Linux Fedora 3

03-10-2005, 07:59 PM	#4 (permalink)
TwistedBard Member Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Nort Carolina Posts: 122 OS: XP SP2	Nope, that's the only reason. It is just so you know things are happening by looking at the pretty lights. More or less. :) __________________ The TwistedBard ASUS A8V Deluxe AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 512MB RAM GeForce 2Ti (old school, man! LOL) 80 GB WD Caviar SE SATA HDD

03-10-2005, 06:55 PM	#3 (permalink)
msanthropy Registered User Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 9 OS: Win XP Home SP2	Thanks for the reply! The card does have four male LED pins on it. Is an activity light the only reason to connect this? If so, I'm not terribly concerned about it. I just want to get the drive installed. I was just concerned that there was some other need for it.

03-11-2005, 12:35 AM	#5 (permalink)
msanthropy Registered User Join Date: Mar 2005 Posts: 9 OS: Win XP Home SP2	Man, that was totally effortless. My computer's running like lightning now. Thanks for the help!