Marvell 9128 Sata 3.0 [6Gb/s] manifesting as IDE

[JohnPC]

Good evening- [warning...long post here]

I've been working these last few days on some recent upgrades to my GA-790FXTA-UD5 [Gigabyte] system, and I have found some puzzling issues. I did my original install of Win7-64 ultimate last year using the AHCI drivers from the beginning in order to get the extra speed at startup etc. All of my drives then were SATA 2.0 [3Gb/s], so I used ports 0 through 5 for my devices. SATA 3.0 [6Gb/s] ports 6,7 are Marvell 9128 and I never used them so I disabled the controller in the Bios. Since I didn't have any IDE devices, I never saw an IDE post at start up until now.

My new SATA 3.0 devices (1x WD 1 TB & 1x Hitachi 2 TB) are posting at start up under IDE Master 2 and IDE Master 3. Only my SATA 2.0 devices show up as SATA drives during the post. When I check the driver under Devices & Printers in the Win 7 OS, it shows the Marvell 6G controller is functioning fine. So...ummm...


1> I'm beginning to think that I need to treat the Marvell devices as the AHCI set up in that it has to be initiated at install to get it recognized correctly... yes/no?

2> I'm wondering if the bios post is just a shared bridge/PCIe bus issue from the IDE & Marvell Controller....

3> My top transfer so far between a SATA 3.0 drive to SATA 3.0 drive averages about 110 MB/s and that seems a bit slow (though faster than anything before.)

4>Another thought regarding speed is that I have 2 ATI 5870's working on the 2 PCIe x16 slots, so adding the SATA 3.0 to that might be bottlenecking the data... maybe?

5> Any thoughts on using a Crucial C300 on the Marvell SATA 3.0 update (Nov.2010) as a boot drive C: ? ie...TRIM issues, SATA 3.0 as IDE, bottleneck problems?

Any and all input greatly appreciated from this tired novice-techie,

JohnPC

PS. All my drivers are completely up to date thanks to this awesome site I found linked from a UK site: Station-Drivers: le site de drivers, bios, firmwares avec un forum d'aide. Unfortunately it's all in French, but its still very navigable if you know what you are looking for.

 

[Cr00zng]

Warning... long reply here

The transfer rate for HDD drives pretty much tops out at around 110 MBs, regardless if they are SATA II or III. There are exception and some of the HDDs can reach around 150 MBs, or a little more, but that's pretty much the max for mechanical drives at the current time. The HDD drives interface of SATA III is for compatibility with the SATA III port and not indicative of its throughput capabilities.

The SSD drives on the other hand can double this rate on either of the SATA ports. The current SATA II SSD drives can reach close to the max transfer rate of the SATA II ports. The C300 is SATA III SSD drive that exceeds the throughput capabilities of the SATA II ports.

You should use AHCI setting for the SATA III ports and change it before installing Windows. It does not guarantee that it'll change how these ports look like in Windows, but it may and depends on the BIOS.

The Marvell chipset uses a PCIe x1 lane on your motherboard. Enabling the chip, or the SATA III ports in the BIOS does not impact the performance of the PCIe x16 lanes.

The Crucial C300 will work just fine as the boot drive on the SATA III port. The Marvell chipset does not support TRIM and the drive in itself uses Garbage Collection, or GC.

I have an Asus motherboard with the Marvell chip set to AHCI, where the C300 SSD drive (boot drive) shows up as USB drive in the BIOS and in Windows it shows up as ATA/IDE device. In my opinion, it doesn't really matter how it shows up as long as it's working correctly. Windows can call it floppy, as long as the read speed is around 330 MBs...

 

[JohnPC]

Hi Croozng-
Thanks for the thoroughness of your reply-

The HDD drives interface of SATA III is for compatibility with the SATA III port and not indicative of its throughput capabilities.

> Its good to know that...It hadn't occurred to me that compatibility would be the main reason since all the marketing boasts transfer speeds.

The Marvell chipset uses a PCIe x1 lane on your motherboard. Enabling the chip, or the SATA III ports in the BIOS does not impact the performance of the PCIe x16 lanes.

> After looking over the schematic block diagram (11th time I think now, ) I see you nailed it. There is a 1x not a 16x on that lane.

You should use AHCI setting for the SATA III ports and change it before installing Windows.

> Had a feeling about that one... I'm going to clone my current boot drive and mess around with a fresh install on my new drive using AHCI drivers since it'll take me a few days to reinstall everything back to working order. As I mentioned, my original install did use AHCI, but just on the SB750 SATA 2.0. It didn't occur to me at the time that I'd have to do the same for the Marvell 9128 too.

The Crucial C300 will work just fine as the boot drive on the SATA III port. The Marvell chipset does not support TRIM and the drive in itself uses Garbage Collection, or GC.

> I'm looking forward to seeing the performance change. I checked into Garbage Collection since I hadn't heard of it. I guess as long as I leave the system in idle state for a few hours, it kicks in and deals with the clutter on the drive. Again, good to know ahead of time-

Thanks much-
JohnPC

 

[Cr00zng]

You're welcome John and welcome to the forum...

Had a feeling about that one... I'm going to clone my current boot drive and mess around with a fresh install on my new drive using AHCI drivers since it'll take me a few days to reinstall everything back to working order. As I mentioned, my original install did use AHCI, but just on the SB750 SATA 2.0. It didn't occur to me at the time that I'd have to do the same for the Marvell 9128 too.

Depending on the current size of your system drive and the size of the C300 SSD, you could create a Windows image backup and restore it on the SSD drive. You could also try shrinking the system drive to the size of the new C300, do the Windows image backup, and restore image to the C300. You may need to disconnect the original system drive during the restore process.

Don't restore the backup image to the un-formatted SSD drive; format the C300 in Windows and it'll align the SSD partition correctly.

 

[JohnPC]

Don't restore the backup image to the un-formatted SSD drive; format the C300 in Windows and it'll align the SSD partition correctly.

My current C drive and my C-300 are both 128 Gb, so I'll do a simple image restore from one to another. I use Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2011 for all my backup archives, and I have noticed that its best not to work on an unformatted drive, so first I'll do a standard format (long type) before switching to the new Crucial. Then I'll attach it to the Marvell Sata 6 Gb and see if it starts smokin'

Update:
I tried both install methods, 1) Fresh install of Win7 -64 Ultimate with Marvell 9128 drivers from the get go, and 2) Restored an older Win7 - 64 image onto the C300. I was surprised to see that the restore was a tad faster in the benchmarks [HD Tools Pro 4.6 / AS ssd 1.6.4]
I'm a bit confused about the speed discrepancy between the 2 benchmark programs, though at this point, it seems a bit muted since its blazing as far as my perception is concerned!

AS SSD ---> Read 328 Mb / Write 123 Mb
HD Tools --> Read 244 Mb average / 282 Mb maximum

Lots of smiles here!