Does the VT8237A southbridge have issues with SATA-II drives?

[tcsenter]

Originally Posted by SaphireX

Hi pbucera
VIA updated the SouthBridge to the VT8252 "chipset" which is compatible with the SATA II standard...

Both VT8237A and VT8237S are actually newer than the VT8251. VT8251 has not been used in over two years.

VT8237S indeed officially supports SATA 3.0Gbps drives. VT8237A does not.

[pbuceta]

My mobo Asus P5VD2-VM SE actally has a VT8237S which is supposed to support SATA2.
My hard disk SAMSUNG HD321KJ 320 GBytes IDE SATA-II gets recognized perfectly and works most of the times but...
My computer freezes randomly (several times a day).
Other times it produces blue squares (large pixels) on a black screen.
After reseting sometimes the SATA 2 drive is not recognized.
I noticed that generally the system freezes when using the hard disk intensively.
I have already updated to the lastest BIOS 0507 and chipset drivers (via_hyperionpro_v518a).
I have noticed in the event log for system the following warning most of the time the system crashes:
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation. (Event ID 51).

I am finding the VT8237S to be the culprit.
Any feedback?
Any suggestion?

[sm00th101]

Originally Posted by SaphireX

Hi pbucera

The VT8237S is the same as the VT8237A "chipset" the only revision that was later made was the VT8237-R. Neither the VT8237A/S nor the
VT8237-R "SouthBridges" support the SATA II or 2nd Generation SATA drives. So you will need to "jumper" if the drive manufacturer has so designated in order to lock the data rate to 150mb/sec which will allow the drive to be used. Because the controller is not auto-speed negotiation capable. Also SATA "opticals" DO NOT work as well....

VIA updated the SouthBridge to the VT8252 "chipset" which is compatible with the SATA II standard...although some additional BIOS settings may need to be tweaked in order to be fully compliant with some SATA II or 2nd Generation dives.

Does this answer your question?

SaphireX

Hi, my Hitachi HDD's have no jumpers, but the default mode for my 2 1TB HDD's (Deskstar 7k1000)that I just got is the SATA I mode, according to Hitachi. Supposedly, my drive is in SATA I mode. When you say "VIA updated the SouthBridge to the VT8252 "chipset", did you mean the VT8237 was updated through firmware update, or did you mean that the next generation chip was the update? I am trying to find a way to get my drives to be recognized, and I was hoping there was an update I could implement to update the southbridge chipset so I can use my drives.

this VIA chip is running on an Asus A8V Deluxe. I know the HDD's are recognized on my other onboard raid (promise), but I need those for my other 2 drives running in raid 0.

any help appreciated, thanks.

[Mr. Chris]

Smooth, let me see if I'm getting this right. You have 2 existing SATA drives running on the Promise controller, I presume this is on the A8V? And you want to add the 2 new Hitachi SATA drives to the VIA controller on the A8V? Yes?

And, the new Hitachi drives are not being seen by the VIA controller? Yes? If they are SATA I drives, there should be no issue. It might be a setting in BIOS that is not allowing the drives to be seen by Windows. If they are SATA II drives, which I would think a new 1Tb drive would be, they need to be jumpered. But, some drives have to be changed to SATA I mode with a drive utility software, that doesn't work if your drives can't be seen by Windows! (like a Catch 22 situation )

Your question about VIA "updating" the controller; it was a physical hardware change, the newer version chips physically replaced the older ones, there is no firmware update that could have accomplished that. Chris.

[sm00th101]

Originally Posted by Mr. Chris

Smooth, let me see if I'm getting this right. You have 2 existing SATA drives running on the Promise controller, I presume this is on the A8V? And you want to add the 2 new Hitachi SATA drives to the VIA controller on the A8V? Yes?

And, the new Hitachi drives are not being seen by the VIA controller? Yes? If they are SATA I drives, there should be no issue. It might be a setting in BIOS that is not allowing the drives to be seen by Windows. If they are SATA II drives, which I would think a new 1Tb drive would be, they need to be jumpered. But, some drives have to be changed to SATA I mode with a drive utility software, that doesn't work if your drives can't be seen by Windows! (like a Catch 22 situation )

Your question about VIA "updating" the controller; it was a physical hardware change, the newer version chips physically replaced the older ones, there is no firmware update that could have accomplished that. Chris.

yeah, that's all pretty much right. Let me start over.
I have an Asus A8V Deluxe mobo w/ 4 sata ports, 2 on a promise controller, and 2 on a VIA VT8237 controller. I currently have 2 HDD's running in raid 0 on my promise controller, so they are in use. I recently bought 2 1TB Hitachi Deskstar 7k1000, planning on running them in raid 0 as well. I plugged them into the via controller, enabled it in bios and started it up. on the via sata boot screen after post, I got this message "Hardware initiate failed, Please check device!!! The bios does not be installed. Press <g> to continue!" This tells me the hardware cannot communicate with the controller at the most basic level. The new HDD's are technically SATA II, but by default are supposed to be SATA I and the SATA II feature has to be enabled through Hitachi's Feature Tool, which I haven't enabled. There are no jumpers on the drive, the Feature Tool is the only method to change the settings for this drive. The drives themselves work ok, I checked them on the promise controller, and they work there, but my original HDD's raid array isn't recognized on the VIA controller (even though the drives themselves are). I realize not every controller sets up raid the same way, so it's no surprise the array isn't recognized on the VIA controller. I would just switch the drives to the other controllers, but I have too much data on the old drives, and nowhere to back it up, nor do I have the time to reinstall 400 GB in programs right now, so I'd like to avoid that if possible. The main problem seems to be with this VIA VT8237 controller. googling for that error message, and searching this forum, shows this chipset seems to be the common problem. western digital has identified this chipset as a problem as well. I didn't know which thread in this forum was most like my problem, but they all seem to be similar. I see in other threads something about negotiation between the drive and the controller not working, so that's why it doesn't work if the drive is SATA II, but mine is set at SATA I by default, which I will be double checking tomorrow. Thanks for the help in advance.

[Agent24]

I'd say your drives are in SATA-II mode and that's why they're not detected. Download the Hitachi software, put the drives on the Promise controller and then change them to SATA-I, then you can put them on the VIA controller. Hopefully it will work!

I once bought 2x 320GB Seagates which came with jumpers defaulting them to SATA-I, however a recent 500GB Seagate was defaulted to SATA-II.

I think with the amount of boards with SATA-II, there's not much point in makers shipping them them default as SATA-I anymore.

[Mr. Chris]

Smooth, go to Disk Management, and see if the 2 Hitachi drives are displayed there. If they are, you need to "Import" them so Windows can use them. Since the VIA Raid tool pops up when the PC boots up, it sounds like you have the VIA RAID drivers installed. I presume you just intend these drives for data storage? Chris.

[Agent24]

Don't think that will work, he already said they can't even be detected properly at POST.

I plugged them into the via controller, enabled it in bios and started it up. on the via sata boot screen after post, I got this message "Hardware initiate failed, Please check device!!! The bios does not be installed. Press <g> to continue!"

[sm00th101]

Got it figured out. I called Hitachi, and they told me that Agent24 was right. By default, the drives I got were set to SATA II mode, even though there were a ton of reviews complaining about the drives being in SATA I mode by default(maybe that's why Hitachi changed it). Agent24 also had a good idea to try to change the setting through the promise controller. I tried a bunch of different configurations, but I didn't try to run the boot disc with the promise controller hooked up. Sadly, the Hitachi bootup disc didn't see the Promise controller for some reason, so I couldn't access them there. It was a very basic program run in PC-DOS. I took it somewhere that there were some available SATA ports to plug into, I ran the Hitachi Feature Tools bootup disc and changed the settings. Then I brought it back home and it worked great. Now I'm the proud owner of 3 TB of data storage space all running in RAID 0 (2x250, 2x1TB...oops I have 500GB external in that mix ). So, thanks for the help Agent24. I usually get useless responses when I post in threads for help from people who kind of know something, but not really, or didn't read the OP, so I didn't have hope, but you were right

[Hmmmmm]

Originally Posted by Mr. Chris

Smooth, go to Disk Management, and see if the 2 Hitachi drives are displayed there. If they are, you need to "Import" them so Windows can use them. Since the VIA Raid tool pops up when the PC boots up, it sounds like you have the VIA RAID drivers installed. I presume you just intend these drives for data storage? Chris.

I just have to ask, what else could he use them for? Isn't data storage all they do? Any way, congrats on getting that to work.