Need some help please - SATA2

[[Ins]]

Hi everyone!

Right just a quick question that someone might be able to help on.

I've got a Hitachi Deskstar drive and I want to set it to run in SATA2.

Now I know that I need to download the FTOOL.exe program which I can use to boot off of a CD / Floppy, however when I do boot, I receive the following error message:

"Cannot enable A20".

Does anyone have any ideas at all? Apparently these drives do not come with SATA2 enabled and there will be a noticeable difference in speed if I manage to switch it on via this DOS program.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Cheers

 

[FarFarAway]

Have you downloaded and burned the CD image as .iso and booted from CD/DVD?

 

[Ham]

Have you run HDtach to make sure its not already running at sata2 speed?

 

[[Ins]]

Matt - It's actually a CD Jim gave to me, so I'm not sure. All I know is that you can boot from it, so perhaps it's worth me getting Jim to answer that question.

Ham - No I haven't mate. Jim told me that these drives come set as SATA1 as standard, but where can I get this application from and I'll check tonight?

Cheers!

 

[Ham]

http://www.majorgeeks.com/HDTach_d672.html

I spect jims right, but i didn't need to tweek anything but a jumper for my maxtor drive

 

[FarFarAway]

HDTACH - google it mate

Jim's right - all those hitachi drives just need SATA 300 enabled. Change the BIOS boot order to boot from CD first, then it should go straight in (if he's burned it right )

 

[JN]

Yeah its the ISO from Hitachi site. I've used it on my disks, but twas on an old mobo.

 

[[Ins]]

Rightio, I'll look for that HDTACH tonight mate, cheers for that!

The BIOS boot order is already set to boot off the CD first. What happens is the CD spins up and then it just comes up saying "Cannot Enable A20" and leaves me at the DOS prompt……strange!

I googled the error message but didn't find anything of use though.

 

[slugs]

cannot enable a20 is related to himem.sys a memory manager. old dos expanded memory enabler.

i would look for and exe file on the disk. it might not run the application straight off. and you might not have an issue at all

 

[slugs]

just checked the two drives in the machine getting 112mb/s per sec. so i need to go off and see why my disks arn't at sata2 speed now. they are capable

 

[markkleb]

Some of the hitachi HDDs are set to SATA 150 speeds. You have to download the Hitachi FEATURE TOOL to enable SATA 300 speeds. I ran mine off a floppy and includes a couple of other useful features.

Some highlights of the options you can tweak are:

Change Acoustic Level (Basically slow performance + less noise or best performance but not as silent)

Change Advanced Power Mode

Change Cache Settings

Change the Capacity (Can change size of drive for compatibility with older BIOS’s that do not see bigger newer drives)

Change S.M.A.R.T. Operations

Change Ultra DMA mode

Show Drive Temperature (The temperature inside the drive)

Change SATA Settings (Allows you to enable SATA 300 and Spread Spectrum Clocking)

It is also available on CD but i had better luck with my floppy

Unfortunately Hitachi is down right now for me, later give it a try. Just google "hitachi Feature tools"

here is a link to Majorgeeks if you dont want to wait

http://www.majorgeeks.com/IBM_-_Hitachi_Feature_Tool_d3388.html

 

[mVp24]

You sure it's not on a jumper on the back of the drive? For my 7200.10 there was a jumper that had to be set.

 

[markkleb]

Hitachis dont use jumpers