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wolfsburged
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- May 29, 2002
- Messages
- 446
I have a Western Digital 320gb SATA drive which I installed about 3 months ago. I find that occasionally I will go to access it and the drive letter is gone for that hard drive. I also noticed that copying to/from it causes 60-100% CPU usage, which is odd. I have an MSI Nforce2 mobo (matx) with two SATA channels. If I go to device manager and go to properties for the SATA controller and the secondary channel which it is installed on, it shows as being in PIO mode, and has a warning which reads:
"Transfer Mode Downgraded
The transfer mode for this device was set to a mode lower than what it is capable of because of excessive transfer errors to the device. This will cause a loss of system performance. Please check the cabling to the device and verify an 80 conductor flat ribbon cable is used for Ultra66 and higher transfer modes"
I can set it back to Serial ATA DMA for a day or so, but it then bumps it down. When in SATA DMA mode it seems to work fine. Sometimes when I boot up my SATA drives don't show up, and I have to hit the restart button a few times for them to come up.
I have three hard drives in the system - a 200gb WD ATA100 primary HD, a 200gb Seagate SATA drive, and the problematic WD 320gb SATA drive.
The WD SATA drive is the only one giving issues in Windows, but both SATAs can have issues with detection @ boot.
I am using a mATX hometheater case which probably doesn't have the best airflow around these drives. Two are next to each other, and the third is farther away below a DVD/RW. The other potential issue is the power supply is only 200 or 250w.
Any ideas? I'm using the SATA cables that came with the motherboard. Latest Nvidia Nforce drivers. No stability or other issues with the system. Bad HD? Not enough juice? Too hot? All the HDs are pretty warm, but I thought this was pretty normal for these big drives..
"Transfer Mode Downgraded
The transfer mode for this device was set to a mode lower than what it is capable of because of excessive transfer errors to the device. This will cause a loss of system performance. Please check the cabling to the device and verify an 80 conductor flat ribbon cable is used for Ultra66 and higher transfer modes"
I can set it back to Serial ATA DMA for a day or so, but it then bumps it down. When in SATA DMA mode it seems to work fine. Sometimes when I boot up my SATA drives don't show up, and I have to hit the restart button a few times for them to come up.
I have three hard drives in the system - a 200gb WD ATA100 primary HD, a 200gb Seagate SATA drive, and the problematic WD 320gb SATA drive.
The WD SATA drive is the only one giving issues in Windows, but both SATAs can have issues with detection @ boot.
I am using a mATX hometheater case which probably doesn't have the best airflow around these drives. Two are next to each other, and the third is farther away below a DVD/RW. The other potential issue is the power supply is only 200 or 250w.
Any ideas? I'm using the SATA cables that came with the motherboard. Latest Nvidia Nforce drivers. No stability or other issues with the system. Bad HD? Not enough juice? Too hot? All the HDs are pretty warm, but I thought this was pretty normal for these big drives..