I just got Dell Dimension 8400 a week ago.

I am running Windows XP Pro.

It came with 160 GB Seagate SATA hard drive ST3160023AS on SATA channel
0. This one supports NCQ - per Intel Application Accelerator Info.

I later decided to add second hard drive to run in RAID 0, but for now
installed it as a regular second drive. The drive is Seagate 160 GB
SATA ST3120827AS (note diiferent part #) on SATA channel 1. It was
detected by BIOS and formatted successfully. Intel Application
Accelerator detects NCQ support for this one as well.

However, Nero Infotool sees
1) ST3160023AS as Master on Primary IDE Channel 0, DMA ON

2) ST3120827AS as Slave on Primary IDE Channel 1, DMA OFF

Can you explain this ? Why the difference ? I thought the concept of
Master/Slave doesn't apply for SATA. And why DMA is off on the second
drive ?

Lavalys Everest results may shed some light on the issue (but I still
don't know what to do):

1) ST3160023AS shows as 160 GB 7200 RPM, Serial ATA-150

2) ST3120827AS shows as 149 GB, IDE As you can see these are also
different and the second drive seems to be in IDE mode.
Can anyone explain what is going on ?

Sorry I messed up the part number for the second drive - it is
ST3160827AS.

<John_Doe@inbox.ru> wrote in message news:1103175503.073743.64930@z14g2000cwz.googlegro ups.com
Well, not to the serial interface at least. The (A) controller
however, may well be a parallel controller with bridges added.
Next to that a SATA controller may emulate a PATA compatible
controller to the system.

Probably nothing if this is all that you notice of it.
Or is there another problem that you forgot to mention?

John_Doe@inbox.ru wrote:
I cannot speak for the SATA drives, but I do know that the ST360020A (a
60GB drive) is in many instances an 80GB drive that has been cut down to
60GB. (Something to do with catering for the "poorer" markets such as
Brazil.)

It's possible to rewrite these drives back to their normal 80GB.

Possibly this is the case with your 120GB drive? Maybe it's really a
160GB?


Odie
--

RetroData
Data Recovery Experts
www.retrodata.co.uk

John_Doe@inbox.ru wrote:

First, why did you get a 120 gig drive to RAID with a 160? You'd have to
throw away 40 gig of capacity. You really should see about getting a 160
gig drive.

Next, Did you turn on RAID support in the BIOS? It sounds like the machine
is running in IDE emulation mode, which Application Accelerator does _not_
support.

You might want to read the readme file that came with Application
Accelerator and the Dell manual and give what they say, step by step, a
try. For RAID-0 you're going to have to do a ground-up reinstall though.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)