Windows 7: SATA SSD Drive shows up as SCSI - Rediculously baffled...

Hey guys,
Ill try and keep this straight and to the point but at this point myself, intel, and dell are baffled. I have a Dell XPS730 with the Nvidia Nforce 790i chipset. I run two 500 gig SATA drives under RAID 0. I recently installed an Intel X25 80 gig SSD and have ran into problems. Windows recognizes the drive as SCSI in device manager. Granted it works however because it is listed as SCSI TRIM and the intel toolbox wont work which makes an SSD useless.

After tons of research I have found that because of the Nvidia chipset it makes the drive show up as SCSI. I have tried Vista and Windows 7, both show it as SCSI. I have moved the SATA cable away from the other main 4 that support RAID with no luck. I have refomatted several times as well with no luck. I have completely disabled RAID in the bios and it STILL shows as SCSI. Is there any way to get around this? I have read that changing the nvidia controller drivers may work but im not sure what I would switch them to? I am totally lost and any info would be MUCH appreciated!

Windows will do this with some Sata Controllers.

I have a similar issue with a WD Caviar Black with 6-GB/s support, that shows up in Device manager and Explorer as a SCSI device. I've heard that this is not uncommon. But why does it report this way? I have it plugged into the SATA 6 header on my Asus P6X58D-E, but the BIOS setup does not recognize it unless I move it to a SATA 3 header. And yet it seems to work correctly either way. I suppose it's a driver issue with either the mobo or the hard drive.

Just bugs me!

Any ideas?

That is because the SATA 6Gb/s port you have it plugged into on your motherboard is a separate Marvell controller which supports a SCSI driver. You will see a Marvell SCSI controller in the device manager too. Motherboard SATA controllers that are not part of the main chipset will often appear as SCSI devices. These extra controllers have their own BIOS so the drive will not appear as a drive in your motherboard's BIOS SATA drive page. You can configure the controller to display devices that are plugged into it as the computer boots up in the boot menu of your bios (you may have to turn off the splash screen to see it). Only drives on the SATA ports that are associated with Intel P67 chipset will show up in your BIOS SATA configuration page.

You also probably have a JMicron eSATA controller chip on your MB. This will also show up as a SCSI device.

Gene

Gene, thanks for the explanation.

So this is strictly a case of how the device displays, and it matters not otherwise, is that correct? And finally, would the drive display correctly if I plugged it into the 3-GB/s connector? And if so, would there be any performance hit from having the hdd connected in this manner?

Yes and Yes and in all probability no. Either the SATA II or SATA III controllers can sustain that WD drive at full rate. If it were an SSD it would be a different story.

Gene

Hey, it's good to know I'm not alone. I have the same motherboard and WD Black drive and was also annoyed about the drive showing up as SCSI. I can confirm what Gene said since I also have an OCZ SSD (SATA 3/GB/s) plugged into the motherboard's 3-GB/s connector; it shows up correctly, i.e., NOT as SCSI. And, yes, it is a Marvell controller for the SATA 6-GB/s connectors. If you watch the bootup BIOS screens carefully (they flash by fast!), you'll see a line with the WD drive correctly shown as a SATA 6 GB/s drive.

I have run into this also. For me it did not start getting this problem until I loaded a Via 3 port PCI to SATA Card drivers into the system. The HKCUConfig shows all the listings for my SATA drives as SCSI. Removing the driver does not help. This is an internal windows flaw that I think could be fixed. I have installed the exact same drives in other windows XP systems and they don't show as either SATA or SCSI, just the drive model. This has got to be a Raid driver problem and Even though their may be performance issues, ie SCSI 340 vs SCSI 640, I don't even know which of these is being used, if any. I am hoping the Standards group comes up with a solution for this because some other country is going to be first and we can't have that. A SATA device is a SATA device and the operating system should report it as such. There must be a reg entry for this. Who can we e-mail or contact who knows how Windows recognizes devices and thus chooses the correct configuration? I don't know how long ago the Standards Group did SATA II or if they are about to do it, but I read most SATA Controllers are not even Standard in the add-on card and HDD housing device market, especially for the ESATA standard. Any info?

So what is the problem? What are you worried about? Some SATA chipset manufacturers support their SATA devices with a SCSI driver. It is no big deal and not a conspiracy - you only loose a couple of things like being able to control Auto Acoustic mode, but that is it. performance is the same. You can use the Microsoft default SATA drive in some cases. For instance, if you uninstall the Marvell SCSI driver (uninstalling the software along with the device), Windows 7 will install its SATA drivers for the Marvell drives.

Thank You, I don't know where you get the Conspiracy stuff from? Your absolutely correct and I apologize if I sounded tempered, I did not mean too. I was unaware that some manufactures do that. From a point of view of a consumer SATA is current technology and SCSI is old technology. That is all we know. It is hard for us to understand why a manufacturer would sell a SATA and give you SCSI. Turns out Windows knows best after all. You guys in the upper High Tech world see the world from a little different view than us consumers. One Tech on You Tube said the SATA I drives a whopping 40 M/s of actual data through put. SATA II is 80 M/s Not the 150 and 300 we hear so much about. So what are we to think? We need you guys to straighten us out on some of the High Tech stuff that don't jive. I just will not be happy until My computer can decide if IDE is SATA or SCSI. Mean while may the force be with you. 6 Gb/s Thank You for sharing that.