Cant Get SATA 3 Ports Working on Gigabyte X58A-UD5

SPreston2001

New member
Hello everybody im new to the forum and wanted to know if anybody could help me with my small problem. I have a Gigabyte X58A-UD5 mobo and im trying to setup my 600gb Velociraptor hard drive to use the SATA 3 6Gb port and it wont boot. Works fine when I have it connected to a SATA II port but im wondering why the SATA 3 ports wont work? Not really looking for much of a performance gain just trying to satisfy my curiousity lol. I tried installing my OS while having the drive connected to the SATA 3 port and it always hangs. If it does install, when it goes to restart it wont load the boot record. Am I doing something wrong? I finally gave up and connected it to a SATA II port and the install went perfect. Correct me if im wrong but isnt the 600gb Velociraptor a 6Gbs drive? Any help is much appreciated.
 
Hmm I never thought to use a SATA III cable. I never knew there was a difference between SATA II and SATA III cables besides a marketing gimmick. Do you think that will make a difference? Whats a good place to find nice quality SATA III cables? Thanks
 
Ok thanks I will give that a shot and post back with my results. Now can I just power down my pc, swap out the cables, connect my drive to the SATA 3 port and update my BIOS settings to read that drive? Or will I need to do a clean install using the SATA 3 port? Also I went to Gigabytes website and downloaded the lastest Marvel SATA 3 driver. Maybe ill try installing it again.
 
Ok thanks I will give that a shot and post back with my results. Now can I just power down my pc, swap out the cables, connect my drive to the SATA 3 port and update my BIOS settings to read that drive? Or will I need to do a clean install using the SATA 3 port? Also I went to Gigabytes website and downloaded the lastest Marvel SATA 3 driver. Maybe ill try installing it again.

I think you should try the Intel SATA III (6GB/s) ports instead of the Marvell... you might be having issues with the driver support... that's if your motherboards has both.
 
I think you should try the Intel SATA III (6GB/s) ports instead of the Marvell... you might be having issues with the driver support... that's if your motherboards has both.

Hi thanks for the reply unfortunately my board only has the Marvell Sata III ports in which im starting to read up on alot of people having trouble with the Marvell chips. I wish my board did have a Intel Sata III controller. Im waiting on my Sata III cable from newegg to get here since I cant find my motherboard box to see if it came with a Sata III cable.
 
Hi thanks for the reply unfortunately my board only has the Marvell Sata III ports in which im starting to read up on alot of people having trouble with the Marvell chips. I wish my board did have a Intel Sata III controller. Im waiting on my Sata III cable from newegg to get here since I cant find my motherboard box to see if it came with a Sata III cable.

I think most new motherboards do come with at least a single SATA cable. My news Z68 motherboard came with four SATA cables, 2x L shape and 2x normal straight. All four are both 6GB and 3GB compatible.

I don't think there is much difference between the SATA cable itself, since the difference is mostly in the connector rather than the cable.

But its best to purchase a SATA III cable and see if the problem is resolved, if not then contact Gigabyte for some support. Both HDD and SDD have support for SATA III 6GB so you shouldn't have any problems, unless the marvel you have may only support SSD(?)
 
Have you set the Marvel controller to AHCI in the bios?

I think so but I will double check. I have all my other drives set to AHCI but im not sure if I have to set the Marvell controller seperately. Thanks

*EDIT* Ok I checked the BIOS and my Marvell 6-7 Controller is enabled and set to AHCI like the rest of my drives. For some reason it doesnt want to communicate properly with my drives. I dont think its a hardware issue with my board, feels more like a software/firmware issue. Anyhow im still waiting on my SATA III cable to see if that helps. Thanks for all the help.
 
Im starting to wonder if I need to load the Marvell preinstall drivers BEFORE I install Windows on the drive. Is there a small performance gain from using the SATA 3 port over the SATA 2?
 
Sorry for the delay but ive been pretty busy with yard work this weekend. I got everything hooked up and the best answer goes to kilobravo! Ive heard so many people say a SATA cable is a SATA cable and that they all perform the same but I must say SATA III cables must be different from SATA & SATA II cables. As soon as I dropped in the new SATA III cable my drive booted up perfectly from the SATA III port. I caught hell trying to figure out why I couldnt use the SATA III ports and the cable was the culprit. If anyone ever runs into a problem using SATA III ports, the solution may be a simple SATA cable upgrade. Thanks for all the help!
 
my understanding thru the research I did on the subject is that no difference between sataII and sataIII but there is a difference in sataI so unless you used a sataI (150) then it was most likely a defective cable to start with. I have used both sata 2 and 3 cables and seen difference in measured testing between them. but glad ya got it sorted out
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my understanding thru the research I did on the subject is that no difference between sataII and sataIII but there is a difference in sataI so unless you used a sataI (150) then it was most likely a defective cable to start with. I have used both sata 2 and 3 cables and seen difference in measured testing between them. but glad ya got it sorted out
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Maybe so, but I used the SATA cables that came with my UD5 mobo and tried using a different cable with no success. Both cables seemed to be in working order but I guess i'll never truly know lol.
 
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