Probababy dumb noob questions on MHDD

[mr coffee]

My first post, but I've been reading for 3 days here. Apologies if my ignorance is annoying.

First, will MHDD work with Seagate ST3000DM001 (3TB) drives?

Second is the more complex one - I can't get mhdd to see my SATA drives no matter what I do!

I have an old EPOX 8VTAI Athalon mobo with KT880 chipset running Windows XP, sp3. I have a PCI-to-SATA2 card, Syba SYPCI40010, with the Sil3124 Chipset, but I don't see any SATA hdd in mhdd. I've tried it attached to Port 0 on the Syba card in MHDD, and also tried connecting it to the motherboard SATA connector (I didn't think it would work, but I tried). And I tried other SATA drives with lower capacities (640GB), connected to both adapters, to see if the GUID table was the problem. Nothing worked.

More about my computer set up - I have two Parallel ATA channels, one connected to a CD drive (primary), and a CD-DVD drive on the secondary of that same channel (channel 0). The other channel doesn't have anything connected to it (I use it for a PATA hdd caddy, which is empty).

The only thing I can see in MHDD (loaded from the bootable iso loaded in the CD drive) is the CD drive that I booted from. There are empty placeholders for the second PATA DVD, but it's not listed, a 3, 5 (a line down), a line, and 6, 8{one line down). Nothing after the numbers except grayed-out brackets.

I've been reading the documentation, and trying shift-F2, F2, shift-F3, F3, etc., but I don't know where to even look for the problem now. I am afraid it's probably something obvious to you guys, but if any of you have read this far and feel charitable and can give me some clues, I would be VERY grateful. Is there something I need to insert in the mhdd image to make it work with my hardware?

I got 3 of these 3TB drives and I run a 32-bit Windows XP sp3 system, and after trying Paragon GPT loader (which didn't work), and all sorts of stuff with Minitool Disk Wizard Bootable (including trying to "convert" them into 2TB MFT drives (a 2TB NTFS partition) and forget the last 746TB, tried using Seagate Disk Wizard, including bootable version, and including the "workaround" because the Windows version of Seagate's DiskWizard didn't see my 3TB drive without it), and on and on. The drives are OK according to DOS Seatools, although it takes forever to check them.

In case you're wondering where I'm trying to go <LOL>, I was hoping I could use MHDD to reduce the disk capacity to below the 2TB limit and get rid of the "converted-to-MFT" remains of the GPT table I assume is still screwing Windows up, and make the drives look like a plain old MFT-only 2TB NTFS disk that Windows XP would access and store data on reliably.

I'm learning a lot from reading here and other places. HDDs are pretty complex, but really fascinating!

In any case, thanks for kindly reading this.

mr coffee

[Nesa]

ST3000DM001 is 6 Gb/s
EPOX 8VTAI with VT8237 is 1.5 Gb/s

[mr coffee]

Thanks for reply.

Seagate told me the ST3000MD001 should negotiate downward to SATA 2 and then downward to SATA 1 (150) with the controller to whatever speed the controller wants (150).

The ST3000MD001 does negotiate down to SATA 2 (300) to work with the Syba SYPCI40010 in Windows, and I was able to read and even boot through the Syba card when I loaded XP to the protective MBR (the interface seeing it as a 746 gb drive) on the Seagate, so I haven't pursued further whether the VT8237 will connect under windows or not, assuming it must be something else. Of course, that "assuming" has got us all in trouble one time or another <grin>...

Connecting to the motherboard SATA was a desperate attempt to see if mhdd would see a SATA drive at all, and I tried a WD SATA 2 640gb and it showed up in the bios, so I figured that wasn't the problem. i'll try hooking it up to the mobo SATA port tomorrow under windows to see if it can see the drive.

Do you know if mhdd should be able to see a hdd through the Syba PCI interface?

Bart

[fzabkar]

AIUI, the original VT8237 would not autonegotiate a link with 3Gbps or 6Gbps SATA drives. The "VT8237R plus" was OK, however (perhaps the VT8237A was OK, too).

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... p/Sata_via

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/new ... patibility

CHIP FIRM VIA issued a note to its customers telling them of problems with chipset support for hard drives using the Serial ATA II standard.

It said that VT8237 and VT8237R chipsets don't provide forward compatibility for S-ATA II, which is important as hard drive makers are beginning to manufacture this type of drive.

But Via is readying the release of VT8237R Plus, which will solve the problem.

With regard to MHDD, reconfigure the SATA controller in BIOS from AHCI to IDE/ATA/legacy/compatibility mode. This will make your SATA drive look like a PATA. Otherwise try HDAT2.

http://www.hdat2.com/

DiskWizard should be able to configure your 3TB drive as a 2TB physical drive plus a 746GB "virtual physical drive". It does this by creating a second MBR in the space beyond 2TiB. Windows Disk Management partitions and formats the first 2TiB in the usual way, while DiskWizard (Seagate's OEM version of Acronis True Image) does the same with the remaining space by way of its Extended Capacity Manager. Your SATA driver would need to support 48-bit LBA, though. Some drivers are affected by a 32-bit LBA (2TiB) limitation.

BTW, you appear to be misusing the term "MFT" to refer to "MBR".

[mr coffee]

Thanks to Fzabkar for helpful reply!

Does your and Nesa replies about VT8237 speed mean that the syba interface (Sil3124 chip) isn't supported in mhdd?

Is that why the ST3000MD001 didn't show up in mhdd?

Bart

PS - Yes, mbr not mft

[Nesa]

Does your and Nesa replies about VT8237 speed mean that the syba interface (Sil3124 chip) isn't supported in mhdd?

MHDD on start shows recognized controllers