Asus P5Q Deluxe ESATA port hard drive size limit.

My esata port works great with my 1tb drives but will only show my 2tb
drive when the drive is powered up at boot. The 1tb drives can be turned
off without a problem. If I boot with the 2tb powered it will show but if I
turn it off then back on it will not. It is not an enclosure problem as I
have tried a couple. Any suggestions? I search Google and cannot find any
info on an esata port drive size limit so I am puzzled. Thank you.

--
-

wrote:
My esata port works great with my 1tb drives but will only show my 2tb
drive when the drive is powered up at boot. The 1tb drives can be turned
off without a problem. If I boot with the 2tb powered it will show but if I
turn it off then back on it will not. It is not an enclosure problem as I
have tried a couple. Any suggestions? I search Google and cannot find any
info on an esata port drive size limit so I am puzzled. Thank you.


Consider the hardware path being used.

I think it's a Marvell 88SE6121 (pretty ordinary)
followed by a SIL5723 (not so ordinary). Something
along these lines ?

--- 88SE6121 --- 5723 ---- drive
---- drive

http://www.siliconimage.com/products...t.aspx?pid=103

http://www.siliconimage.com/images/p...5723_front.jpg

Trouble is, there are no statements that I can find, about
device capacity. There is a compatibility table, with a list
of disk drives, but it isn't up to date (doesn't have
the drives you can buy today listed). The largest drive in
the table appears to be 1TB, but that could simply be
a function of the date of publication, rather than a limit.
In fact, a few pretty small drives, are listed as not
compatible. So the table is useless for predicting success.

If this was just a port on your Southbridge, it probably
would have been a different story. I think there is an
actual processor and firmware inside the 5723.

http://www.siliconimage.com/docs/sii...L_11-28-06.pdf

This isn't the first time this has happened. Asus put one of those
damn things on another motherboard, and there were no end of
questions about that one too. You'd think Asus would have
learned their lesson and stopped using those things. They're a waste
of silicon, on a motherboard. There are plenty of better things
they could use instead. Even a SIL3132 would have been better.
I'd rather have a SIL3132 than a 5723, because it supports
port expansion if you can find an expander for a decent price.

Paul

wrote:


Thank you for the reply Paul. BTW, I am using XP 64 bit and can't find the
size limit for either version for the esata so I assume it's probably 1TB
because my other drives work fine. If I stop using the marvel and use usb
only would you recommend I disable it in the bios or uninstall the esata
driver? Thx.


I don't see a reason why you can't leave the drivers in place. It's probably
not going to hurt anything.

On some of my motherboards, I turn off hardware in the BIOS, in the interest
of speeding up the boot. If you notice the computer wasting time checking
for drives on those ports, then that may give you an incentive to turn
that stuff off. Otherwise, the lazy approach, is to just leave it :-)

Paul

Paul wrote:
wrote:
My esata port works great with my 1tb drives but will only show my 2tb
drive when the drive is powered up at boot. The 1tb drives can be
turned off without a problem. If I boot with the 2tb powered it will
show but if I turn it off then back on it will not. It is not an
enclosure problem as I have tried a couple. Any suggestions? I search
Google and cannot find any info on an esata port drive size limit so I
am puzzled. Thank you.


Consider the hardware path being used.

I think it's a Marvell 88SE6121 (pretty ordinary)
followed by a SIL5723 (not so ordinary). Something
along these lines ?

--- 88SE6121 --- 5723 ---- drive
---- drive

http://www.siliconimage.com/products...t.aspx?pid=103

http://www.siliconimage.com/images/p...5723_front.jpg

Trouble is, there are no statements that I can find, about
device capacity. There is a compatibility table, with a list
of disk drives, but it isn't up to date (doesn't have
the drives you can buy today listed). The largest drive in
the table appears to be 1TB, but that could simply be
a function of the date of publication, rather than a limit.
In fact, a few pretty small drives, are listed as not
compatible. So the table is useless for predicting success.

If this was just a port on your Southbridge, it probably
would have been a different story. I think there is an
actual processor and firmware inside the 5723.

http://www.siliconimage.com/docs/sii...L_11-28-06.pdf

This isn't the first time this has happened. Asus put one of those
damn things on another motherboard, and there were no end of
questions about that one too. You'd think Asus would have
learned their lesson and stopped using those things. They're a waste
of silicon, on a motherboard. There are plenty of better things
they could use instead. Even a SIL3132 would have been better.
I'd rather have a SIL3132 than a 5723, because it supports
port expansion if you can find an expander for a decent price.

Paul

Thank you for the reply Paul. BTW, I am using XP 64 bit and can't find the
size limit for either version for the esata so I assume it's probably 1TB
because my other drives work fine. If I stop using the marvel and use usb
only would you recommend I disable it in the bios or uninstall the esata
driver? Thx.

--
-

Paul wrote:
wrote:


Thank you for the reply Paul. BTW, I am using XP 64 bit and can't find
the size limit for either version for the esata so I assume it's
probably 1TB because my other drives work fine. If I stop using the
marvel and use usb only would you recommend I disable it in the bios or
uninstall the esata driver? Thx.


I don't see a reason why you can't leave the drivers in place. It's
probably not going to hurt anything.

On some of my motherboards, I turn off hardware in the BIOS, in the
interest of speeding up the boot. If you notice the computer wasting time
checking for drives on those ports, then that may give you an incentive
to turn that stuff off. Otherwise, the lazy approach, is to just leave it
:-)


Paul.

I agree with you 100%. My external drives are used for backup only and if
usb 2.0 is a bit slower than esata it won't matter. I like usb because the
lights on the external drives work showing activity and when esata the
machine shows the activity which can be condusing if I want to shut the
external down but not sure if it's still in use or the main machine drive
is in use.

Would you recommend configuring the externals for quick removal or the
higher performance option? Thank you for all the help, it's appreciated.

Robert

Paul

--
-

wrote:
Paul wrote:
wrote:

Thank you for the reply Paul. BTW, I am using XP 64 bit and can't find
the size limit for either version for the esata so I assume it's
probably 1TB because my other drives work fine. If I stop using the
marvel and use usb only would you recommend I disable it in the bios or
uninstall the esata driver? Thx.

I don't see a reason why you can't leave the drivers in place. It's
probably not going to hurt anything.

On some of my motherboards, I turn off hardware in the BIOS, in the
interest of speeding up the boot. If you notice the computer wasting time
checking for drives on those ports, then that may give you an incentive
to turn that stuff off. Otherwise, the lazy approach, is to just leave it
:-)


Paul.

I agree with you 100%. My external drives are used for backup only and if
usb 2.0 is a bit slower than esata it won't matter. I like usb because the
lights on the external drives work showing activity and when esata the
machine shows the activity which can be condusing if I want to shut the
external down but not sure if it's still in use or the main machine drive
is in use.

Would you recommend configuring the externals for quick removal or the
higher performance option? Thank you for all the help, it's appreciated.

Robert

If your computer is on a UPS, and the computer is connected via a USB or
serial cable to the UPS (controlled shutdown interface), then I'd select
the High Performance option, if that's what you want. My UPS is set up
that way right now - it sends a message to the computer, when there is
limited time left on battery (after a power failure), so that Windows
can shut down cleanly, flush the cache on the disk drive and so on.

The Quick Removal thing might be more appropriate if the computer was
connected directly to wall power, with no UPS. Since the computer
has very little time in the event of a power failure there, I doubt
any cache could be flushed. Quick Removal then would mean less
damage to the file system. NTFS is journaled, so the next startup
could help resolve any fragments left over. FAT is more exposed to
incidents like that.

I presume there are rules for what options you'll be offered, and
you might not always have both options available to you.

There is a table here, for example. And some accompanying text to
describe what options may be offered, and ways to override them.

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbstick_e.html

I haven't honestly looked at this when using my USB hard drive. I slap
a drive into the enclosure and use it occasionally, then remove it later
(because normally the enclosure has a DVD writer in it). And don't really
leave the thing unattended. If I was to leave it connected all the time
with a hard drive in it, I should be paying more attention :-)

Paul

Paul wrote:
wrote:
Paul wrote:
wrote:

Thank you for the reply Paul. BTW, I am using XP 64 bit and can't
find the size limit for either version for the esata so I assume it's
probably 1TB because my other drives work fine. If I stop using the
marvel and use usb only would you recommend I disable it in the bios
or uninstall the esata driver? Thx.

I don't see a reason why you can't leave the drivers in place. It's
probably not going to hurt anything.

On some of my motherboards, I turn off hardware in the BIOS, in the
interest of speeding up the boot. If you notice the computer wasting
time checking for drives on those ports, then that may give you an
incentive to turn that stuff off. Otherwise, the lazy approach, is to
just leave it
:-)


Paul.

I agree with you 100%. My external drives are used for backup only and
if usb 2.0 is a bit slower than esata it won't matter. I like usb
because the lights on the external drives work showing activity and
when esata the machine shows the activity which can be condusing if I
want to shut the external down but not sure if it's still in use or the
main machine drive is in use.

Would you recommend configuring the externals for quick removal or the
higher performance option? Thank you for all the help, it's
appreciated.

Robert

If your computer is on a UPS, and the computer is connected via a USB or
serial cable to the UPS (controlled shutdown interface), then I'd select
the High Performance option, if that's what you want. My UPS is set up
that way right now - it sends a message to the computer, when there is
limited time left on battery (after a power failure), so that Windows
can shut down cleanly, flush the cache on the disk drive and so on.

The Quick Removal thing might be more appropriate if the computer was
connected directly to wall power, with no UPS. Since the computer
has very little time in the event of a power failure there, I doubt
any cache could be flushed. Quick Removal then would mean less
damage to the file system. NTFS is journaled, so the next startup
could help resolve any fragments left over. FAT is more exposed to
incidents like that.

I presume there are rules for what options you'll be offered, and
you might not always have both options available to you.

There is a table here, for example. And some accompanying text to
describe what options may be offered, and ways to override them.

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbstick_e.html

I haven't honestly looked at this when using my USB hard drive. I slap
a drive into the enclosure and use it occasionally, then remove it later
(because normally the enclosure has a DVD writer in it). And don't really
leave the thing unattended. If I was to leave it connected all the time
with a hard drive in it, I should be paying more attention :-)

Paul

Excellent info Paul, thanks much. I also want to get your opinion of
converting my P5q Deluxe to AHCI. There is plenty of info regarding how to
do it without having to reinstall windows. There are .reg files etc
involved and I have no problem with that but what I don't know if I would
get any performance increase or decrease with AHCI? I have heard stories of
longer boot times etc. Would it be worth converting in the long run or
would you just leave it be? Thank you.

Robert

--
-

wrote:


Excellent info Paul, thanks much. I also want to get your opinion of
converting my P5q Deluxe to AHCI. There is plenty of info regarding how to
do it without having to reinstall windows. There are .reg files etc
involved and I have no problem with that but what I don't know if I would
get any performance increase or decrease with AHCI? I have heard stories of
longer boot times etc. Would it be worth converting in the long run or
would you just leave it be? Thank you.

Robert


AHCI is good for two things.

1) Supporting hot plug of drives. Useful for an ESATA device for example.
Or if you use one of those SATA dock devices. I'm pretty careful with
my hard drives, and like to only handle them with the power off, so
there is less chance of mechanical shock to the drive while it is
spinning. If your setup gives you good control over that (only
handle drive when it is not spinning), then Hot Plug support could
be a useful thing.

2) NCQ support. This is useful for server loads, where multiple pieces of
software are sending commands to the drive at the same time. With NCQ,
the drive has the ability to re-order the commands, for less head
movement. If you're a single user on a desktop system, this might be
less of a benefit. AHCI might actually add a second or two to some
operations, as there is some overhead involved. It's a positive thing,
if you have lots of queue buildup in the disk queue (pending commands
building up in queue, drive can't keep up, multiple storage threads).

If you wanted one ESATA port, the easiest way to get it might be to plug in
an add-in card (like a card with a SIL3132), and then install an AHCI driver
for that. So that, there is less disturbance to any choices you'd already
made when installing the OS (i.e. changing Southbridge mode).

Yes, there are undoubtedly recipes out there, for dynamically switching.
In particular, Windows 7 makes it dead easy to change to AHCI (re-arm via
registry change). The previous OSes are more of a nuisance, and the recipe
is a lot more complicated. Certainly, you can do a "Repair Install" on an
older OS, offer an F6 driver early in the process, and change to AHCI that
way, but then you'd have to do all your Service Packs and Security Updates
over again. It works best, if you prepare a new installer CD for yourself,
using NLite, and slipstream in the Service Pack level you're currently using
on the OS. (So the installer CD matches the service pack level of the current
OS installation.) That eliminates one step, during your Repair Install.

"Integrate a Service Pack"
http://www.nliteos.com/guide/part1.html

If doing a Repair Install, read up on the caveats with respect to Internet
Explorer. The latest versions are not tolerant of repair installs. You're
supposed to uninstall things like IE8 and try and return the OS to the
level of Internet Explorer it was using when it was installed. That
wasn't always the case, as there was a time where the repair install
would take care of IE for you. But now, you can muck up IE if you leave
an advanced version present, and Repair Install over top of it.

Now, that advice doesn't explain, how a person repairing a "broken OS" is
supposed to remove IE, before doing a Repair Install. And that just shows
you how dumb Microsoft is. If the OS is broken, there might be no opportunity
to remove IE, and then there could be trouble when you try to Repair Install
your way out of the situation.

Repair Install doesn't change your installed applications, or delete your
email. It does affect the Service Pack level, and remove the Security
Updates, such that a visit to Windows Update afterwards, and an hour
of downloading is still required.

As always, do a complete backup before you push the button, so you
have an escape route if the Repair Install doesn't work out. The same
would be true for one of those recipes that involves extensive registry
changes.

I just shut down the PC, connect my SATA device, and use the disk that
way (with no hot plug). For a lazy guy, that's less work than the above.

Paul

Paul wrote:
wrote:


Excellent info Paul, thanks much. I also want to get your opinion of
converting my P5q Deluxe to AHCI. There is plenty of info regarding
how to do it without having to reinstall windows. There are .reg files
etc involved and I have no problem with that but what I don't know if I
would get any performance increase or decrease with AHCI? I have heard
stories of longer boot times etc. Would it be worth converting in the
long run or would you just leave it be? Thank you.

Robert


AHCI is good for two things.

1) Supporting hot plug of drives. Useful for an ESATA device for example.
Or if you use one of those SATA dock devices. I'm pretty careful with
my hard drives, and like to only handle them with the power off, so
there is less chance of mechanical shock to the drive while it is
spinning. If your setup gives you good control over that (only
handle drive when it is not spinning), then Hot Plug support could
be a useful thing.

2) NCQ support. This is useful for server loads, where multiple pieces of
software are sending commands to the drive at the same time. With
NCQ, the drive has the ability to re-order the commands, for less
head movement. If you're a single user on a desktop system, this
might be less of a benefit. AHCI might actually add a second or two
to some operations, as there is some overhead involved. It's a
positive thing, if you have lots of queue buildup in the disk queue
(pending commands building up in queue, drive can't keep up, multiple
storage threads).

If you wanted one ESATA port, the easiest way to get it might be to plug
in an add-in card (like a card with a SIL3132), and then install an AHCI
driver for that. So that, there is less disturbance to any choices you'd
already made when installing the OS (i.e. changing Southbridge mode).

Yes, there are undoubtedly recipes out there, for dynamically switching.
In particular, Windows 7 makes it dead easy to change to AHCI (re-arm via
registry change). The previous OSes are more of a nuisance, and the
recipe is a lot more complicated. Certainly, you can do a "Repair
Install" on an older OS, offer an F6 driver early in the process, and
change to AHCI that way, but then you'd have to do all your Service Packs
and Security Updates over again. It works best, if you prepare a new
installer CD for yourself, using NLite, and slipstream in the Service
Pack level you're currently using on the OS. (So the installer CD matches
the service pack level of the current OS installation.) That eliminates
one step, during your Repair Install.

"Integrate a Service Pack"
http://www.nliteos.com/guide/part1.html

If doing a Repair Install, read up on the caveats with respect to
Internet Explorer. The latest versions are not tolerant of repair
installs. You're supposed to uninstall things like IE8 and try and return
the OS to the level of Internet Explorer it was using when it was
installed. That wasn't always the case, as there was a time where the
repair install would take care of IE for you. But now, you can muck up IE
if you leave an advanced version present, and Repair Install over top of
it.

Now, that advice doesn't explain, how a person repairing a "broken OS" is
supposed to remove IE, before doing a Repair Install. And that just shows
you how dumb Microsoft is. If the OS is broken, there might be no
opportunity to remove IE, and then there could be trouble when you try to
Repair Install your way out of the situation.

Repair Install doesn't change your installed applications, or delete your
email. It does affect the Service Pack level, and remove the Security
Updates, such that a visit to Windows Update afterwards, and an hour
of downloading is still required.

As always, do a complete backup before you push the button, so you
have an escape route if the Repair Install doesn't work out. The same
would be true for one of those recipes that involves extensive registry
changes.

I just shut down the PC, connect my SATA device, and use the disk that
way (with no hot plug). For a lazy guy, that's less work than the above.

Paul

Excellent advice Paul. I ahven;t decided if I want to try an AHCI recipe as
yet because hings are working including thr esata port provide the drive is
not larger than 1tb because my 2tb would not work on esata port.

I gorgot to ask you before. I have a couple new WD 1tb drives and the one
that I was attempting to connect to esata before getting the driver issues
fixed shows many Ultra DMA CRC errors with HD Tune. If I understand
corectly it is not a drive problem but a problem that the controller had
communicating with the drive, correct? CRC errors displayed in SMART data
could be due to a bad usb cable etc. Am I correct regarding this? If a
drive has a problem connecting to the controller because a cable is faulty
a CRC error can occur. I am hoping that it's not a drive issue as the drive
is brand new and not a refurb. Nothing to worry about I hope? Thanks.

--
-

wrote:


Excellent advice Paul. I ahven;t decided if I want to try an AHCI recipe as
yet because hings are working including thr esata port provide the drive is
not larger than 1tb because my 2tb would not work on esata port.

I gorgot to ask you before. I have a couple new WD 1tb drives and the one
that I was attempting to connect to esata before getting the driver issues
fixed shows many Ultra DMA CRC errors with HD Tune. If I understand
corectly it is not a drive problem but a problem that the controller had
communicating with the drive, correct? CRC errors displayed in SMART data
could be due to a bad usb cable etc. Am I correct regarding this? If a
drive has a problem connecting to the controller because a cable is faulty
a CRC error can occur. I am hoping that it's not a drive issue as the drive
is brand new and not a refurb. Nothing to worry about I hope? Thanks.


I found some info here. SMART is apparently documented in the ATA spec,
according to the article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T

"0x01 Read Error Rate ... is often not meaningful as a decimal number"

Now this looks more interesting. Mine reads out zero in the data field value.

"0xC7 UltraDMA CRC Error Count

The count of errors in data transfer via the interface cable as
determined by ICRC (Interface Cyclic Redundancy Check).

My two SATA drives, have quite large stats for 0x01, but they show zero
for the 0xC7 UltraDMA error count.

Both ends of the SATA cable, need to check for errors, like this. The SATA
cable has a separate diff pair for each direction, and the recipient has to
check for errors. CRC is calculated over the data in the packet. It's similar
to say, an Ethernet packet concept. I don't know how re-transmissions are handled,
or whether the protocol is "reliable" or has acks piggybacked on data packets
or the like. The SMART stat, would be a measure of the counter on the
right hand end of this diagram. I don't know where the counter for the left
hand end is kept (it would be hard for SMART to do it).

+-------------+ +-------+
| Motherboard | ------------------ (error check) | disk |
| | (error check) -------------------- | |
+-------------+ +-------+

Based on that skimpy info, if your 0xC7 data value is non-zero, it implies
a cable (or chip on either end of the cable) issue. A pinched SATA cable
could do it. Running the SATA cable next to a source of high amplitude interference
could do it (next to the flyback on an old TV set, next to the ignition wires
on your car, etc).

HTH,
Paul