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Marvell SATA-III 6Gb driver failure under Win7 64bit
MY first post... Shame it has to be about the failure of Marvell's SATA-III 6Gb controller driver to load under Windows 7 64bit.
The driver fails to load from both the manufacturers CD as well as from the latest (supposedly 64bit) driver download from their website... the manufacturer being Gigabyte - the motherboard being a GA-X58A-UD3R (revision 1).
Device manager shows the Intel iCH10 SATA channels and the Gigabyte SATA channels loaded and operating correctly... however even after attempting to load 'legacy devices' and pointing to the (supposedly) Marvell 64bit *.inf Windows 7 still cacks itself that the driver is a "non-64bit compliant device driver"...
Now... because I have a dual boot system with Win-XP Pro installed on a separate HDD I've loaded the 32bit version of the Marvell SATA-III 6Gb controller driver from the Gigabyte download centre (and just to be certain, from the Mobo setup CD) without hiccup or problem of any sort; and the Marvell SATA-III 6Gb controller shows up clearly in XP-Pro's Device Manager - giving me the sort of performance from my Seagate 2Tb SATA-III 6gb HDD that I was expecting, as well as hoping to have under Windows7 64Bit!
Bottom line: I have seen nothing regarding the Marvell 64bit SATA-III 6Gb controller and it's performance (or in my case, lack of performance!!) under Windows7 64bit.
That Gigabyte clearly has what they purport to be a "64bit" version of the Marvell SATA controller for download on their support sites, when it clearly won't load on a Windows7 64bit system that has the exact hardware and OS that is supposed to be supported is - in my view, a pretty poor show!
Don't these people test their stuff?!!!
Anyway - rant over...
If there's anyone out there who also has a mothereboard with Marvell SATA-III 6Gb SATA ports, a SATA-III 6Gb Hard Disk Drive and is running a 64bit OS, who has managed to get verified installation (not just assumed installation, simply off the back of the 'console' loading the software to it's destination folder...) - I'd be very, very interested to know how you achieved it!
(BTW - HDD test app shows that the Seagate 2Tb SATA-III 6Gb drive is running as SATA-III 6Gb under Win-XP Pro while it is running as SATA-II 3Gb under Windows7 with 'various options' unavailable, which shows that even if people think (assume) the Marvell 64bit SATA-III 6Gb controller driver has loaded under Windows7 64bit... it hasn't!!)