ACer 8204 using not on native SATA?

Could it be using a PATA to SATA bridge?
Though it shows that the controller is a SATA controller.
and the HDD is a Seagate ST9100824AS SATA NCQ.



It shows Ultra DMA 6.. isn't it supposed to be SATA?
Could it be on a PATA to SATA bridge?

HDTach results.. UDMA 6 performance?



Call Acer Support and they claimed that it's all SATA..
the transfer mode is not reflecting correctly..

?????

 

I've never looked into it, my 8204 being my first system with SATA... Does SATA normally show up under IDE Channel Properties? I'm not familiar enough with the differences between PATA and SATA to know how this should be...

The speeds seem okay, if I'm reading that correctly. It's entirely possible, I'm sure, that a notebook drive would benchmark slower than a desktop drive, particularly if the SATA 150 score shown is on a 7200RPM drive vs. the 5400RPM in the 8204...

???

 

HMmm... on my desktop which is a AMD X2 4400 on a Asus A8N32-SLI.
Which is a NF4 chipset and using Nvidia SATA controller,
it shows as SATA II 3gb/s for the transfer mode.
I am using Hitachi T7K250s there..

So i'm not sure about laptops..

Could Napa be using a PATA to SATA bridge?
Or is it juz Acer?

 

Acer might have the system set to legacy/compatibility mode in the bios. Would not surprise me at all if they did. Not sure but if they needed to install special drivers upon initial windows xp install they would opt to do it in legacy mode, so a) they don't have to install the drivers and b) the end user would not have to either when restoring their laptop. But since I don't have one I can't open up the drive bay or look in the bios and see what's going on. I would be real pissed if it was a pata drive in the system.

*EDIT*: After looking at the model number the drive is for sure sata. But it's only 5400 rpm. Check your bios and see if there are any options for sata stuff. Don't change anything but let us know. You'll most likely need to reinstall XP to use the different settings.

*EDIT*EDIT*: There is a change that seagate is using a pata-sata bridge. I know they don't for their desktop drives.

 

Yeah.. it's pretty weird.. i will do more follow up as the days go by..
kinda need to start installing all my development tools to start work..

Dun wanna mess up the laptop as it's my only PC atm..

 

I don't know whether it's generally indicative, but when I (partially successfully) installed Linux, the drives were recognized as SATA. This makes me think that the BIOS is not programmed in some compatibility mode. But this isn't an area I'm particularly expert in.

- Ed

 

I looked in the BIOS, and found no settings that would seem to influence this. In fact, there are very few settings, period.

I did some quick research, and found some other references to SATA drives showing up as indicated here. I'm still not sure that this means anything...

 

I asked Seagate if this being indicated in the IDE Channel properties is what's supposed to be there, and their answer:

"Hello Mark:

Yes, this is normal for a SATA drive.

Best regards.

Kamel A.
Seagate Technical Support"

 

Hmm.. did u ask them why it's normal?
Shouldn't it show SATA instead of UDMA?

 

HMmm.. anyone has updates on this issue?

 

just to say that I have replaced original seagate with a hitachi 7200 and I am getting the same infos/settings in the picture above... no SATA is mentioned anywhere.

 

My AS5672 is also showing DMA mode 6 under the Primary IDE controller. I thought this was odd until I checked my desktop machine which is an Asus P4P-800DLX and it shows as DMA mode 5 even though it's also SATA. I think one possible explanation is that these "new" technologies take awhile to be fully integrated and often end up in some sort of half way compatibility mode even though in this case they are listed as fully SATA.

sibelius