WD caviar green drive writes at 110M/s but reads at 4M/s ...

[doublehp]

[Cyker]

Ahaha! Thanks, when I saw that I thought it was the on-board stuff due to all the USB stuff

I think it might be a compatibility issue between the drive and that card then; Might be worth talking to WD support...

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_faqid=1337&p_created=1112379341

[doublehp]

[Cyker]

With the adaptor, you're effectively using a completely different SATA controller (Probably a JMicron bridge chip) to talk to the SATA drive, which is evidently a lot happier about it than the Via one.
That then translates to the venerable old IDE interface, which is pretty much bullet proof due to its age.

<rant>
One thing IDE still thrashes SATA at is compatibility; IDE is a well established hardware standard from the days where that mattered.

Nowdays, all hardware people do what the heck they like and let the drivers sort out the mess which is why so much modern stuff is such a git to get working together. The AHCI 'standard' SATA is a baby by comparison, and it shows in the slight AHCI incompatibilities between different hardware implementations (It's fairly well known that with most 1st/2nd gen AHCI hardware, you're better off using the mfg specific driver. For kicks, I once tried forcing an ATI AHCI driver with an Intel motherboard on Windows; Results were not pretty!).

Right now we're in the sort-of shaky ground, like when DOS sound cards started moving away from using the SoundBlaster hardware 'standard' and relied on drivers to make the hardware work...

[doublehp]

[doublehp]

In short:
- too late for payback (In France, pay-back should be asked within 7 days after billing)
- WD accepts that some drives may not not properly with some VIA boards
- no firmware available ATM
- not sure if it's WD of VIA fault

My drive's page is: http://wdc-fr.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc_fr.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1679&p_created=#jumper

diagnose software: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?modelno=WD10EADS-00M2B0
The windows version is very funny:
- Sata drive detected as IDE
- 1T drive detected as 9G
- drive miss-detected once upon two, when you relaunch the application (no need to reboot to get different results)
- "SMART short test" in fact becomes a "short bad block scan" when smart not available
- no way to copy-paste SMART data; only log reports
- prefers from very far when their drives are pluged in IDE through adapter
- makes all possible mistakes on my Seagate drive that works 100% well under Linux ("not SMART compliant", 9G ... )
- no speed test available
_________________
DEMAINE Benoît-Pierre (aka DoubleHP ) http://www.demaine.info/
>o_/ Coin coin coin \_o<
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[NeddySeagoon]

doublehp,

[Ant P.]

This does sound like a chipset problem given that you said it worked better with the IDE adaptor.

I'd go with the above explanation about it not being native AHCI... you can check that without rebooting by looking at `lspci -v` and see whether it's using the "ahci" kernel module or not.

[doublehp]

[NeddySeagoon]

doublehp,

The description lies. Its not PATA and its not AHCI compatible either. sata_via is correct for you.
I doubt that it has a compatibility mode in the BIOS as its not needed.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[doublehp]

There is no RAID pop-up in the bios, no key-sequence to hit to configure it, and the disks are not visible from grub. I never tried to boot directly (my bios has a "try third party device" or sth like this, that usually work for RAID cards or so), but I just think it would not work.

I don't know which *HCI layer it is. The chipset may have common parts with the USB2 stack; the card both offers PATA and SATA (the IDE drive is <<typically shown as /dev/sdc>>).

Anyway, I am satisfied with the explanation <<the device does not fallback in SATA 1 mode>>. And WesternDigital just accepted to say that <<maybe the drive does not recognise properly the chipset>>. They refused to answer my question <<who is not respecting the SATA standards ? WD not managing properly the compatibility mode ? VIA not advertising themselves properly ?>>. All I know is that there will not be any SATA solution; and that the solution will be <<put those drives on any other chipset or adapter>>.

Or find an other combo card USB2-SATA-PATA that would not use the VIA chip
_________________
DEMAINE Benoît-Pierre (aka DoubleHP ) http://www.demaine.info/
>o_/ Coin coin coin \_o<
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[pigeon768]

Go through every single item in the BIOS. It has to be in there somewhere.

[doublehp]

My video and sound card don't produce entry in the BIOS. Some HDD cards don't either.

Trying to boot the VIA card would not help in any manner anyway

It's sometimes hard to add the [SOLVED] tag when the original title was close to the length limit (depends on forum params).

NeddySeagoon what do you mean by "The description lies." ?

What do you want me to look for in my BIOS ? "compatibility or IDE mode selected in the BIOS." ? As it's a daughter card without config pannel, would the main BIOS really affect a daughter card ?

DLG is not even able to properly report SMART fields, and fails to find the real exact volume size (dont forget: it detects two 1T drives as 9G); I would not take big care when it says that a SATA drive is IDE SATA is "IDE encapsulated in SCSI stack" anyway ... I just find funny that the drive directly plugged on SATA board is detected as IDE while the one pluged on PATA with adapter is recognised as SATA; just funny to me DLG is just crap. Smartctl can properly read SMART fields, and fdisk can properly detect the right disk size, and fdisk reports the same disk size as smartctl; I really wonder where DLG finds 9G
_________________
DEMAINE Benoît-Pierre (aka DoubleHP ) http://www.demaine.info/
>o_/ Coin coin coin \_o<
to contact me (MSN,ICQ, JABBER, Skype ... ) http://benoit.demaine.info/contact.png

[NeddySeagoon]

doublehp,

[doublehp]

http://www.cijoint.fr/cj200910/cijZJPU5Gb.gif
_________________
DEMAINE Benoît-Pierre (aka DoubleHP ) http://www.demaine.info/
>o_/ Coin coin coin \_o<
to contact me (MSN,ICQ, JABBER, Skype ... ) http://benoit.demaine.info/contact.png