Dell E310 in SATA mode

The factory drive is SATA and is operating in SATA mode. It IS NOT in PATA mode - not possible. PATA is for parallel IDE drives and CD/DVD drives. ACHI option probably not available because the ACHI drivers are missing. You should use the RAID/ATA option; don't use the Combination option.

Sorry, I'm kinda new to SATA drives. I don't seem to have a full grasp of the terminology, yet. I suppose I should have said that the drives are running in Ultra ATA mode instead of AHCI mode.

Some background:

The E310 came with a single 80 GB SATA drive and XP MCE was pre-installed. I added a 250 GB Seagate SATA drive. I wanted to start with a clean slate (no crapware), and I wanted to run a clean installation of XP Pro on it.

So, I downloaded the Intel Matrix Storage Manager Drivers from Dell and extracted them to a floppy disk, and I pressed F6 when prompted during the XP installation. When asked, I chose to install the AHCI drivers. Everything went well, the drives were recognized, XP Pro is now installed.

I then installed the chipset drivers, and the audio, video, and network drivers. Everything looks good in Device Manager, except under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers I have:

Intel(R) 82801FB Ultra ATA Storage Controllers- 2652

Intel(R) 82801FB/FBM Ultra ATA Storage Controllers- 266F

It should say: Intel(R) 82801FBM SATA AHCI Controller, or something similar, but since I couldn't enable AHCI in the BIOS before installing Windows, I'm kinda stuck.

I shouldn't have to resort to a PCI SATA card, but I don't know any other way to enable AHCI. And I believe I need AHCI support to enable Native Command Queuing. After all, isn't that one of the benefits of having SATA drives in the first place?

So, will a PCI SATA card work in an E310 if I disable the onboard SATA controllers?

Or, isn't it worth the effort - is there a real performance difference with NCQ? I'll be running Photoshop almost exclusively on this machine.

Message Edited by Snidely Whiplash on 05-15-200604:14 PM

No, if your drives work, then they are running SATA. Ultra ATA is for parallel equipment - ATA hard drives and CD/DVDs.

You might want to try using the Intel Matrix Manager instead of Dells.

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-021736.htm

How did you select FB/FBM drivers? They are for Mobile applications. Should us the drivers corresponding to the PCI Bridge family you have. This should be in the line listing the Ultra ATA drivers - ICH7, ICH6 or ICH5. My 9100 is ICH7 and uses the GR/GH version. Or look in System Devices. You have a Intel 915 chipset and should use an ICH6 driver. Do some checking around the Intel site for the correct driver. You may need a different version for XP Pro.

Hmm...

According to Intel:

The SATA controller has three modes of operation:

• IDE mode - no AHCI, no RAID
• SATA mode (sometimes called AHCI mode) - AHCI enabled, no RAID
• RAID mode - AHCI enabled, RAID enabled

NOTE: Your system may not have all three options, depending on the motherboard manufacturer and model.

I guess I just don't have the option to run in AHCI mode. It's not in the BIOS.

It's too bad I can't return the unit - my 21 days passed while I was trying to figure this out.

If you go to the Owners Manual for the E310 here:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim3100/en/index.htm

you will see under Specifications that the system supports Raid/AHCI mode as well as NIC and Raid 1. You must have installed the wrong drives set. As I said previously, check System Devices in Device Manager to see what version of the 82801 chipset is listed.

ICH7 and ICH6-based chipsets, as well as ICH5 and ICH5R-based chipsets, do not use AHCI.

I believe your board has an ICH7 Chipset, at least the 510's do, therefore no AHCI.

Message Edited by Snidely Whiplash on 05-15-200604:56 PM

I've decided to salvage what's left of my sanity and go with a PCI SATA Controller Card. The Promise SATA300 TX4  should do the trick, since I'm not looking for RAID capabilities.

Thanks for the help, guys.