I just got Dell Dimension 8400 a week ago. It came with 160 GB Seagate
SATA hard drive ST3160023AS on SATA channel 0. This one supports NCQ -
per Intel Application Accelerator Info.

I am running Windows XP Pro.

I later decided to add second hard drive to run in RAID 0, but for now
installed it as a regular second drive. The drive is Seagate 160 GB
SATA ST3160827AS (note different part #) on SATA channel 1. It was
detected by BIOS and formatted successfully. Intel Application Accelerator
detects NCQ support for this one as well.

However,

Nero Infotool sees

1) ST3160023AS as Master on Primary IDE Channel 0, DMA ON
2) ST3160827AS as Slave on Primary IDE Channel 1, DMA OFF

Can anyone explain this ? Why the difference ? I thouht the concept of
Master/Slave doesn't apply for SATA. And why DMA is off on the second
drive ?

Lavalys Everest results may shed some light on the issue (but I still
don't know what to do):

1) ST3160023AS shows as 160 GB 7200 RPM, Serial ATA-150
2) ST3160827AS shows as 149 GB, IDE

As you can see these are also different and the second drive seems to
be in IDE mode.

 

What gives ?

 

Maybe Nero/Everest just don't "read" SATA controller correctly ? If anyone has 2 SATA drives in your system and has Nero/Everest installed - can you check what they show for your drives ?