SATA & IDE Question

[Shawz]

Hi,

I am currently using 2 x SATA II hard drives but still using an IDE DVD Drive. Due to this I have set my motherboard to legacy mode to cope with the IDE Drive.

Would I notice any performance improvement in changing the DVD drive to SATA and switching off the legacy option on the motherboard.

Any help or advice much appreciated

[Walrus]

I'd be very surprised if there was any difference at all, certainly the performance of the DVD drive would not improve, as no DVD comes anywhere near saturating a modern IDE bus.

I suppose the question is..... is your machine running slower than you'd expect?

In my experience, if there's no particular issue at hand, things are often best left alone.

That said.... Looking at your motherboard, it would appear that the IDE controller is part of the Gigabyte SATA2 controller (2x SATA + IDE), which is seperate from the Intel ICH8R controller (6xSATA). Given your setup, I'd be inclined to ensure the harddrives are attached to the ICH8R, and leave the DVD on the Gigabyte SATA controller by itself (I've a distinct mistrust of 3rd party drive controllers, not that hardware is bad, but often the software drivers are substandard). This will let you put the ICH8R into AHCI mode (in the BIOS) for the hard drives if you wish.

Note:-
ICH8R is controlled by \"SATA RAID / AHCI Mode\" and \"SATA Port0-3 Native Mode\" in the BIOS.
Gigabyte SATA is controlled by \"Onboard SATA/IDE Device\" and \"Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode\" in the BIOS.



Then I'd visit.....

For a BIOS Update
http://www.giga-byte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/BIOS_Model.aspx?ClassValue=Motherboard&ProductID=2295&ProductName=GA-965P-DQ6

For an Intel Chipset driver update
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/inf/

[Shawz]

Thanks Walrus :D

I was trying to stop the hard drives running in IDE mode so followed your instructions. I can now monitor the HDD temps as well (didn't work before)

HDD running at 31 degrees. Is that good or bad? what sort of temps should they run at?

Starting to learn loads.....this is great

[Walrus]

Modern SATA harddrives generally have an operating temperature range of 0-60°C, so 31°C is pretty much the middle ground. I've one particular drive that happily sits at 45-50°C 24/7.

Of course this will depend on the exact make/model of drive, the exact specs for your drives should be available from the manufacturers website.

[Doctor 8Ball]

[quote:9436224103=\"Shawz\"]
Would I notice any performance improvement in changing the DVD drive to SATA and switching off the legacy option on the motherboard.[/quote:9436224103]

In my experience I keep optical drives running in IDE and have all hdds running sata.

I have tried several combinations but haven't noticed anything different in performance and unless you like benchmarks and shaving of latency times I wouldn't bother :P

Also if you have problems with cooling, go with all SATAs as the chunky ide cable restricts airflow.

This is only my advice however !