Gigabyte GA-8I945PMF, SATA-II, and SMART

I've had this motherboard for a couple of weeks now and still haven't been
able to use it for anything useful for one reason or another.

First off, I had a Western Digital WD2500KS SATA-II drive. It failed smart
on 'unknown' attribute $BE. I emailed WDC tech support and they did
eventually reply with "This is a bug in the software and all SATA II drives
fail this SMART attribute, please ignore it, it is not a failure and it is
not serious.". Well, I think they meant "all Western Digital SATA II
drives". Anyway, before they replied it was evident that the drive was also
failing on bad sectors, and eventually even the SMART table was corrupted;
returning a truncated table.

Aside: does anyone know if drive SMART data is held on a reserved area of
the disc surface, or whether it's in some form of NV memory?

Okay, that drive got sent back to the supplier and is awaiting replacement.
Meanwhile I've bought a Samsung HD080HJ SATA-II drive. And yes, this one
also appears to have problems, but this time it's with the interface (I
suspect). Examining the SMART table reveals the following -

(C3) Hardware ECC Recovered 100 100 0 3020345 Ok

- now, it's flagged as OK, but something is quite obviously not right.
There's a lot of error correction happening, but I'm not sure if this
parameter relates to the data being pulled off the platters or to the
SATA-II interface.

Does anyone know of a useful technical resource on SMART?

Is anyone else getting this sort of data returned? Could anyone using a
SATA-II drive in this board please post their SMART results?

Incidentally I was using HD-Tune 2.51 from http://www.hdtune.com/ to view
the SMART data.

I really need to start using this system, and right now I just don't trust
it.

--

/mel/

np: silence

tried the samsung hd checking utility?

"/mel/" wrote in message
...
I've had this motherboard for a couple of weeks now and still haven't been
able to use it for anything useful for one reason or another.

First off, I had a Western Digital WD2500KS SATA-II drive. It failed smart
on 'unknown' attribute $BE. I emailed WDC tech support and they did
eventually reply with "This is a bug in the software and all SATA II
drives
fail this SMART attribute, please ignore it, it is not a failure and it is
not serious.". Well, I think they meant "all Western Digital SATA II
drives". Anyway, before they replied it was evident that the drive was
also
failing on bad sectors, and eventually even the SMART table was corrupted;
returning a truncated table.

Aside: does anyone know if drive SMART data is held on a reserved area of
the disc surface, or whether it's in some form of NV memory?

Okay, that drive got sent back to the supplier and is awaiting
replacement.
Meanwhile I've bought a Samsung HD080HJ SATA-II drive. And yes, this one
also appears to have problems, but this time it's with the interface (I
suspect). Examining the SMART table reveals the following -

(C3) Hardware ECC Recovered 100 100 0 3020345 Ok

- now, it's flagged as OK, but something is quite obviously not right.
There's a lot of error correction happening, but I'm not sure if this
parameter relates to the data being pulled off the platters or to the
SATA-II interface.

Does anyone know of a useful technical resource on SMART?

Is anyone else getting this sort of data returned? Could anyone using a
SATA-II drive in this board please post their SMART results?

Incidentally I was using HD-Tune 2.51 from http://www.hdtune.com/ to view
the SMART data.

I really need to start using this system, and right now I just don't trust
it.

--

/mel/

np: silence

"old man" wrote in message
...
tried the samsung hd checking utility?

Well, all SMART utilities are going to report the same issues. The only
other thing to try would be a surface test, but the implication here is that
it's not a problem with the platters but with the interface. I can't recall
if I tried a Samsung utility... hang on - I think I looked for one
specificalyl from Samsung but couldn't find one. I'll look again.

Incindentally, I did find some useful info on SMART at
http://www.almico.com/sfarticle.php?id=2

I got a replacement WDC drive and that one has updated firmware that doesn't
fail SMART on the $BE attribute.


"/mel/" wrote in message
...
I've had this motherboard for a couple of weeks now and still haven't
been
able to use it for anything useful for one reason or another.

First off, I had a Western Digital WD2500KS SATA-II drive. It failed
smart
on 'unknown' attribute $BE. I emailed WDC tech support and they did
eventually reply with "This is a bug in the software and all SATA II
drives
fail this SMART attribute, please ignore it, it is not a failure and it
is
not serious.". Well, I think they meant "all Western Digital SATA II
drives". Anyway, before they replied it was evident that the drive was
also
failing on bad sectors, and eventually even the SMART table was
corrupted;
returning a truncated table.

Aside: does anyone know if drive SMART data is held on a reserved area of
the disc surface, or whether it's in some form of NV memory?

Okay, that drive got sent back to the supplier and is awaiting
replacement.
Meanwhile I've bought a Samsung HD080HJ SATA-II drive. And yes, this one
also appears to have problems, but this time it's with the interface (I
suspect). Examining the SMART table reveals the following -

(C3) Hardware ECC Recovered 100 100 0 3020345 Ok

- now, it's flagged as OK, but something is quite obviously not right.
There's a lot of error correction happening, but I'm not sure if this
parameter relates to the data being pulled off the platters or to the
SATA-II interface.

Does anyone know of a useful technical resource on SMART?

Is anyone else getting this sort of data returned? Could anyone using a
SATA-II drive in this board please post their SMART results?

Incidentally I was using HD-Tune 2.51 from http://www.hdtune.com/ to view
the SMART data.

I really need to start using this system, and right now I just don't
trust
it.

--

/mel/

np: silence