SATA hard drive usage settings and system installation considerations

One, BIOS setup section

Because each motherboard's BIOS is not the same, but the principle is basically consistent, here only a few more typical BIOS settings, I believe that readers can refer to the actual situation of the motherboard BIOS to solve the problem.

1. The South Bridge is the ICH5 motherboard

Let's take Asus ' p4c800 as an example, the motherboard chipset is I865PE, and the South Bridge is ich5/ich5r. After entering the BIOS, select the IDE Configuration Menu under Main, and under onboard IDE Operate mode, you can choose between two IDE modes of operation: Compatibility mode and enhanced mode (compatible mode and enhanced Mode). Compatibility mode compatible mode, which is understood to map the SATA hard drive ports to the corresponding ports in the parallel port IDE channel, when you select this mode, there are three options in the IDE port settings below:

Primary P-ata+s-ata: The Parallel IDE hard disk occupies the main channel of the ide0+1 (Primary IDE Channel), and the serial SATA hard drive occupies ide2+3 from the channel (secondary IDE Channel). This means that the port for the second parallel IDE interface on the motherboard is not available.

Secondary p-ata+s-ata: Contrary to the above, the corresponding port on the first parallel IDE interface (Primary p-ata) on the motherboard is not available because the SATA hard drive is occupied.

P-ata Ports only: Shields the serial SATA Hard drive interface, only uses the parallel interface device.

Note: In the first two modes, the SATA1 interface on the motherboard automatically corresponds to the primary disk position in the IDE channel, and the SATA2 interface automatically corresponds to the disk position in the IDE channel.

When the selection mode is enhanced mode for enhanced modes, the typeface for the port settings below changes to enhanced mode Supports on, which also has three options:

P-ata+s-ata: Parallel and serial hard drive coexistence mode, at this time Sata and PATA channels are independent of each other, theoretically 4 p-ata and 2 S-ata can receive 6 devices at the same time, in fact, depending on the motherboard, and some of the South Bridge chip only support 4 ATA devices. At this point, the SATA1 disk corresponds to third IDE master (the third IDE Channel Master disk), and the SATA2 port hard disk corresponds to fourth IDE master (Fourth IDE channel Master disk).

S-ata: Serial hard drive enhanced mode, which theoretically supports 4 serial hard drives, but also depends on the motherboard support (if the ICH5R chipset such as p4p800, want to set RAID mode, you must select this and the Configure S-ata as RAID item to Yes, The S-ata bootrom item is set to enable, when the BIOS automatically detects after setting, press "Ctrl+i" for raid setting).

P-ata: In fact, is still a mapping mode, SATA hard disk occupies the first IDE channel, SATA1 port corresponding to the first channel of the main disk, SATA2 port corresponding to the first channel from the disk.

When you are using a traditional operating system such as Win98/win Nt/win2000/ms-dos, because they only support 4 IDE devices, select compatibility Mode compatible modes and choose IDE Port based on the number and location of your actual hard drive. The corresponding option in the settings; When you are using a new type of operating system such as winxp/win2003, you can choose to enhance enhanced mode to support more devices. Of course, if you install Win98+win XP dual system, also have to choose Compatible mode. In addition, some motherboard BIOS has bugs that cause the installation of the Windows 98SE system on a single SATA hard drive does not install the SATA hard drive correctly (such as: Hua Chi p4vt8), only need to upgrade the BIOS version to the latest edition can be resolved.

Note: Although the SATA hard drive itself is not master-slave, but if you use the mode of port mapping, when you want parallel hard disk and serial hard disk coexistence, you should pay attention to the location of the hard drive does not conflict, and the boot sequence also need to be in the BIOS according to the actual situation of the corresponding

2. The bridge is the Intel ICH5R motherboard

Take GA-8KNXP Ultra as an example, briefly describe the SATA settings in the BIOS of the gigabyte motherboard:

The motherboard's chipset is i875p, the South Bridge is ich5r, and its SATA portion is set in integrated peripherals under Main main menu (Integrated peripherals): options for starting devices in the Advanced BIOS Features ( Advanced BIOS feature setting), see the appropriate settings above.

The two examples above show that the motherboard for the ICH5/ICH5R Bridge is set to identify the SATA drives through port mapping and independent SATA channels. As to which mode and setting value should be selected, please refer to the above and set the operating system according to the number of S-ata hard disk and p-ata hard disk, and which one as the system boot disk.

3. The VT8237 motherboard for the Via

Compared to the ICH5/ICH5R chipset, the VT8237 SATA Setup section is much simpler. The following is an example of the sl-kt890 series, with the SATA section setting options in the main menu of integrated peripherals (integrated peripherals):

Onboard PATA IDE (built-in parallel IDE port settings in the motherboard)

This setting allows the user to configure the built-in parallel IDE port features in the motherboard.

Disabled: Turn off the parallel IDE port feature on the motherboard.

Enabled: Parallel IDE port function (preset) is allowed.

Onboard IDES operate mode (motherboard built in IDE priority setting)

The device priority (default) on the PATA is Pri ide:pata port.

The device on the SATA is Pri ide:sata port is preferred.

Onboard sata-ide (motherboard built-in SATA port function set)

Disabled: Turn off the SATA port on the motherboard.

SATA: The SATA port on the motherboard is used as a normal SATA port.

RAID: The hard drive on the motherboard on the SATA port can establish a disk array (preset).

Here you only need to adjust the string, parallel port priority to the normal use of SATA hard drive. (It can be seen from the above options that the S-ata hard disk here can be recognized as a map to the P-ata port.) )

Note: The RAID setup also needs to press the "tab" key at power-on to enter the BIOS setup screen of the Via Technology RAID Controller, please refer to the relevant instruction manual.

4.NF4 Motherboard

Here we take the 9npa+ultra of the pan positive as an example. On the boot, press Del to enter the BIOS Setup page of the motherboard.

First, we make the relevant settings for the hard disk. Select integrated peripherals entry, which contains the associated setup options for the hard drive, including SATA Mode, secondary Master UDMA, secondary Slave UDMA, SATA1/2, SATA3/4, Several options for RAID enable. In each option, there are Enabled and disabled two options to choose from, where we simply set "SATA1/2", "SATA3/4" to [Enabled] to activate SATA, and the other options remain unchanged.

In addition, if your machine has only one hard drive installed, and you do not need to build raid, then you have the RAID Enable option set to [Disabled], which is to turn off this feature. Conversely, if you need a group RAID mode, you need to be set to [Enabled] to open the feature. In addition, the delay for HDD (secs) option provides 0, 12 modes for everyone to choose from.

After the setup of the hard disk, we also have to start the system smoothly for a simple setup. Press ESC to exit the hard drive Setup entry and select the Aduanced BIOS features entry into the Basic BIOS setup option, in which we can see the first boot Device, Second boot Device, third boot Device three settings items, each of which includes removable, Hard disk, CDROM three options, the first for the system to automatically find a bootable disk, the second to third for hard disk boot and CD-ROM boot. Then we set the first boot device to hard disk and the system defaults to the hard drive as the primary boot disk.

In addition, if you are using a SATA hard drive, if you do not have a floppy drive installed in your machine, we also want to turn off the floppy drive. The method is to first select the Aduanced BIOS features entry into the Basic BIOS setup option, select Boot up floppy seek return, and select [Disabled].

Partitions for SATA hard disks

Now generally use Win98/me startup program with Fdisk, DM, PQ and other tools to partition the hard disk. So as long as the BIOS is set up correctly and can be identified after the start of the SATA hard drive, then the SATA hard disk partition and the traditional same-port hard disk partitioning method is exactly the same.

If you are using win2000/xp/2003 and so on to boot and partition, if your SATA hard drive is not recognized, then you need to be prompted on the screen "press F6 if you are need to install a third party SCSI or RAID Driv Er ... "press F6 to load the driver with the floppy drive, and when the hard drive is correctly identified, it is exactly the same as the traditional hard disk partitioning method.

Note: Some motherboards do not come with drive floppy disks (such as k7s8xe+, sis748+sis964 chipset), and their drivers are not directly copied from the CD directory to the floppy drive, but to be installed on the motherboard CD-ROM, please carefully read the motherboard instructions manual.

Installation of the operating system

1.win98/me

No matter what chipset you are using, you can install it properly as long as the BIOS is set correctly and the motherboard identifies the s-ata hard drive. (Note: Of course, it must be noted that win98/me and other systems can only support 4 devices.) )

2.win2000/xp/2003 and other NT core systems

Here because ICH5 does not need to load RAID module, so the direct installation can (in fact, is to map the S-ata to the P-ata port to use, naturally and the same as the same port hard disk). and ICH5R Bridge controller is divided into two cases, one is to completely block the RAID module in the BIOS, then it is the same as the ICH5, direct installation can be, and the second is to turn on RAID (the default in the BIOS is open), then you need to boot at the F6 with the floppy drive load driver. The VT8237 should theoretically be the same as ich5r, and most motherboard specifications also indicate that the drive is not required to load only as a normal SATA hard drive, but in practice the driver needs to be loaded regardless of the raid feature.

Note: At present, in addition to the S-ata controller with the South Bridge, the other third party S-ata controller needs an additional drive, some motherboards in addition to their own South bridge support S-ata, but also on the plate promise, such as Third-party S-ata and RAID controller, please pay attention to distinguish.

Driver-driven installation under operating system

When the operating system is installed, the corresponding driver needs to be installed further.

1.ich5 only needs to load Intel-provided INF drivers.

2.ICH5R, in addition to the INF driver, also loads IAA3.0 or more version drivers.

3.vt8237 need to be installed via Hyperion 4-in-1 patch.

If you also use a parallel hard drive, it is advisable to use via standalone via IDE miniport driver driver, it is likely to make the parallel hard disk burst transmission rate, but the performance of the serial hard disk has not much impact.

Note: If you are using a Third-party SATA control chip and RAID module, you will also need to add the appropriate driver.

Summarize

Through the above, we can see that the use of S-ata hard disk is the correct way to set up the BIOS, and because each motherboard manufacturer's BIOS menu is not the same and the motherboard manual of the vague, it caused the s-ata hard disk in the use of various problems. Because of the difference in research and development capabilities, to make the motherboard manufacturers to unify this part, the current stage is not realistic, so I only hope that the reader can refer to this article, according to their own actual situation to extrapolate to solve the problem.