SATA drives not reporting S.M.A.R.T. info

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carnageX

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Ok, well in HDTune and Speedfan, none of my HDD's are identified in the SMART info. I remembered about a control mode for SATA drives in the BIOS, and see that there's an option called "Onboard SATA/IDE Control Mode." The choices are "IDE: SATA ports work as IDE mode," "AHCI: SATA ports work as AHCI mode," and "RAID/IDE: SATA ports work as RAID mode and IDE ports work as IDE mode."

It's currently set on IDE mode. Could this be the reason why my drives are not reporting back SMART data? If so, what should I change the option to?

There's also a couple other values I was wondering about. "SATA RAID/AHCI Mode" (options are Disabled, RAID, and AHCI) and "SATA Port0-3 Native Mode" are both disabled. Would it be one of these values instead or in combination with the other one I stated above?

Thanks for the help.
 
I've had motherboards that have had that option and Windows wouldn't install if it wasn't set to run in IDE mode. I ran SpeedFan on it and it ran fine. If you enable RAID or AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface), Windows, Linux or whatever you have will not boot up so don't change those options. You need to install a 3rd party controller to run those.

AHCI just enables a couple of features that SATA drives can do that IDE couldn't. Has nothing to do with SMART.

What you can try is enable your "SATA Port 0-3 Native Mode" and see if XP boots. It has some support for SATA controllers. This allows your drives to act as SATA drives and not as IDE. Maybe that's the reason I don't know. It is an odd one.
 
Yeah, I did a little googling on AHCI mode after I posted (shoulda done it before I posted eh? xD), and that's what it had said. Found a couple areas to make AHCI mode work after Windows is installed, but it seems like too much hassle to go through just to get a few other features (such as hotswapping...something I'm not gonna do anyway).

I'll try doing the Native mode. Thanks.

Edit: Booted up just fine, but didn't fix the problem.
 
Hmmm. Almost seems as if your motherboard is just telling you that it's using SMART. Have you tried a BIOS update? Could be a fix in there.

If you've already tried that, try turning SMART off and boot up. See if anything changes and if not, turn it back on and see if it changes. Also try clearing your CMOS. Never know with boards these days.
 
I was actually planning on doing a BIOS update today anway xD.

SMART was disabled before in BIOS (wasn't working), and then I enabled it a while ago, and it wasn't working still.
 
Updated BIOS, made sure SMART was enabled, made sure Native SATA mode was enabled...and still nothing =\.
 
Wow I guess your hard drive and motherboard just don't like each other. I really don't what else to say man. That is one weird problem your having.
 
Lol guess so. Oh well I suppose...

Odd though, because I have a 500GB SeaGate SATA drive, which isn't recognized by SMARt, a 320GB Western Digital SATA that's not recognized by SMARt, and a 160GB SeaGate SATA (hooked up through USB in an external enclosure tho) that's not recognized by SMART... But my external Maxtor 160GB (USB) is recognized in Speedfan, just no info is reported back from it? So apparently it has to do w/ my mobo's SATA controller, possibly?
 
Hmm, good idea. I'll do that after work today...never thought of doing that I suppose.

Thanks for the help, appreciate it =).
 
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