SATA to IDE drive capped at 3.9MB/s

Trackr

[H]ard|Gawd
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Feb 10, 2011
Messages
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Hey, I bought the SATA to IDE converter from P-PCs.

http://www.performance-pcs.com/cata...e=product_info&cPath=66_149&products_id=25208

The drive connected okay, and was recognized just fine.

But when I run HD Tune, the bandwidth is capped at 3.9MB/s.

CrystalDiskMark doesn't even start - it just sits there clicking.

It's the only drive I have, so I can't make 100% sure that it isn't faulty, but I used it about a month ago and it was just fine. Been in storage with my other drives ever since.

What do you think, guys?
 
No, I'm fresh out of 6 year-old hard drives (no rudeness intended).
 
I have no idea.

You could buy a USB to sata/ide converter to try out? It's only $8, and it gives you a useful tool to use in the future for diagnosing problems or transferring data from any random drives you encounter. I haven't used this specific one, but I have two similar to it, and both work fine.
 
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I have no idea.

You could buy a USB to sata/ide converter to try out? It's only $8, and it gives you a useful tool to use in the future for diagnosing problems or transferring data from any random drives you encounter. I haven't used this specific one, but I have two similar to it, and both work fine.

DOH

I can't believe I was so stupid!

I forgot to set SATA to IDE mode. Well, I guess now we know what happens to an IDE drive under ACHI :D
 
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At least it worked. I have several SATA1 drives that won't work at all in AHCI.
 
I wanted to post here because I'm experiencing the exact same issue.

First, my setup:
ASRock Z77 Extreme6 motherboard (Intel Z77 SATA controller and an ASMedia SATA controller) and two different SATA to IDE converters
Rosewill RC-204 (Silicon Image SIL3811 chipset)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812206002
Syba SY-ADA40011 (JMicron JM20330 chipset)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812186095

Tested wtih various drives, all with the same symptoms, but primarily I'll be using this with an ATA 100(UDMA5) Western Digital WD2500JB drive.

Under Windows 7, both adapters on the Intel controller (using the default Win 7 AHCI SATA controller driver), the drive was detected (and in device manager showed UDMA 5 mode), but as the OP said, all benchmarks showed the drive was capped at ~3.8-3.9MB/s (seemingly PIO4 mode). Moving the drive to the ASMedia controller (also in AHCI mode), my speeds jumped to ~55-60MB/s, just where they should be.

It looks like the OP solved this by changing the mode of the SATA controller to IDE. In both cases above, the controllers were set to AHCI mode, but one worked just fine (ASMedia), the other didn't (Intel).

Leaving the drive connected via the Intel controller in AHCI mode, I booted Ubuntu 13.04 and used the built in drive benchmark software. Both adapters showed speeds ~55-60MB/s. This is clearly an issue with the Windows 7 drivers.

Since my boot SSD needs to be AHCI, I can't swap the controller to IDE mode. For the time being, I'll need to leave the drive connected to the ASMedia controller.

I also tried installing the Intel RST drivers. This did a couple things... it removed the hotswap eject options for the connected drives and it also caused the Rosewill adapter to not be detected (well, the drive showed up in the disk manager as unknown, and never showed up in My Computer). Also, in device manager, with the RST drivers installed, I lost all the ATA Channel 0-5 that were listed before (which is where I checked the WD2500JB was in UDMA5 mode). The other oddity, when the drive was connected to the Intel controller, HD Tune showed supported speed was UDMA 5, but active speed was UDMA 6. I wonder if this discrepancy has anything to do with the horrible performance.
 
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