Epox 9NPA+ Ultra and SATAII

leaskovski · 18 Oct 2006 at 19:19

Hi guys,

I have finally just got a new SATA-II disk (my first one) to plug into my Epox 9NPA+ Ultra motherboard.

One thing i don't understand though as i am a noobie at this SATA stuff... Why the device manager is only reporting transfer mode as 1.5 and not 3?

I am pretty sure the motherboard is SATA-II. The drive i am using is a seagate 7200.10 250GB disk. Oh and i didn't put any jumpers on the operation mode.

Any ideas? Thanks all!

leaskovski · 19 Oct 2006 at 13:00

Am i doing something really stupid? :confused:

leaskovski · 19 Oct 2006 at 13:18

smids said:
So there are no jumpers on the hard drive at all (shouldn't be for 300MB/s on the Seagates), and you have the nV IDE SW drivers installed (latest ones)?

Yep, no jumps on the drive. As for the drivers, i am pretty sure i am running the nv ones. When i last install the forceware stuff (6.86? or something or other) i said yes to the SW IDE drivers.

Thanks

leaskovski · 19 Oct 2006 at 13:26

dokko said:
Don't you have to install the SATA drivers from a floppy when you format the HD?

I'm sure that's what i was told, however, i had already installed about 6 hours o content when i found out, so never bothered.

But the last BIOS update i did seemed to have fixed the problem, i think, well its shown as SATAII and it hadn't done before.

I think i have got the latest bios as well, as the magic bios program has told me that it is the last version.

I suppose i will give installing the nforce drivers ago again.

leaskovski · 19 Oct 2006 at 13:54

When i get home, i will check these out.

Thanks

leaskovski · 19 Oct 2006 at 18:11

Okay, the motherboard says ultra on it so it should have SATA-II and the driver version on the nVidia nForce4 serial ATA controller is 5.10.2600.666

leaskovski · 19 Oct 2006 at 18:27

Yep, im buggered if i know whats up. Should it say sata-ii if i am just connecting it to the sata connectors and not doing any raid stuff with it?

leaskovski · 20 Oct 2006 at 00:11

How many nvidia nforce 4 serial ata controllers should be listed in the device manager??

leaskovski · 20 Oct 2006 at 00:13

Combat squirrel said:
Hey, iv had this board, (Epox 9NPA+ Ultra) it doesnt support SATA2, the nforce 4 chip does, but its soldered not to enable it, you can enable it by removing the chipset heatsink and joining together 2 solder points, google it, theres many guides on getting SATA2 working on the board. TBH its not worth the risk , there aint much difference between sata 1 and 2 in terms of actual speed

Thats completely ridiculous! They advertise the board as SATA-II! It even has that on the side of the box and in the manual! :mad:

leaskovski · 20 Oct 2006 at 11:16

Well i suppose that i it then. I won't both moding the mobo as it just isnt worth it.

leaskovski · 25 Oct 2006 at 09:11

http://www.aoaforums.com/forum/epox-motherboards/38652-epox-9npa-ultra-and-sataii.html

Well the 3GBPS part of the spec has been used as mentioned in the above thread.

Interesting!

Has anyone else got one of these drives (seagate ST3250620AS) running at full speed on an 9NPA+ Ultra boards?

leaskovski · 26 Oct 2006 at 09:50

I got it working in the end.

After close inspection of the drive i noticed that a jumper was in place. The flaming thing was so small and it was the same colour as the connection block.

I need to get my eyes tested! :mad: