ASUS P5PE-VM - Anyone using SATA2 drives?


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Is anyone using the ASUS P5PE-VM m/board for their UnRAID system using SATA2 drives connected directly to the motherboard connectors?

 

From what I've seen so far any SATA HDD 500Gb or larger is a SATA2 drive.

 

I've ended up ditching the Gigabyte K8VT800 Pro board because it won't work with SATA2 drives (see VT8237 thread) so I want to make sure the ASUS board works OK before I buy it.

 

Anyone?

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Roscoe62,

 

I just recently purchased an Asus P5PE-VM motherboard as a backup for my original Intel micro ATX motherboards.

 

I checked the manual, and nowwhere, as far as I can see, do they use the word "SATA2".

 

However, on page 1-3 of the manual, it says "...and up to 150 MB/s data transfer rate."

 

Hope this helps?

 

Regards,

TCIII

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Yeah, in the Gigabyte manual it SPECIFICALLY states, and I quote "It is recommended to use SATA (1.5Gb/s) hard disks", so I guess they kinda knew that SATA2 drives might cause some issues. There's no such statement in the Asus manual but I guess it'd be nice to hear from someone that already had a SATA2 drive hooked up to make sure.

 

Tom, that whole thing with the jumper not working still has me scratching my head. I don't know why that's not working.

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Well from the lack of replies in this thread, I'm once again finding myself on the "bleeding edge"!

 

My new Asus P5PE-VM board should arrive today along with a new socket 775 cpu (I could only afford a CeleronD3.06) so hopefully this weekend I will be able to get it going.

 

If there are any issues with this board driving SATA2 drives (albeit at SATA1 speeds) I'll be sure to report it back here.

 

....still can't believe I'm the only one attempting to connect a SATA2 drive to a m/board SATA controller... ???

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Oh I understand, especially the cables! However msot of what I have is PATA and it seems to be easier to find deals on them. One or two fo my workstations have SATA but that's it. Not saying it's not a good idea to go that way but it's newer tech and I'm not sure the added speed helps in an array - if it does I'm all ears!

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Well, my P5PE-VM board arrived yesterday. I'm hoping my Zalman cpu cooler turns up today, and then I guess I'll be spending this weekend building an UnRAID system.  ;D

 

I'll report back with how the onboard SATA controller handles the 500Gb SATA2 drives I have. I think I've already decided though, that if there are problems, my next 2 500Gb drives will be PATA and I'll use them on the motherboard SATA controller.

 

BLKMGK,

 

I hear what you're saying about the specials, but over here there's really only a couple bucks difference in price - i.e. - EVERYTHING'S expensive!  :)

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I now have this board running with 6 drives of various sizes.  I have not had any problems.  I have 4 sata drives. 2 are on the MOBO and 2 on a promise controller.  I have 2 PATA drives on the MOBO.  My Sata drives are all Sata 150 drives. The system has been remarkably stable so far (about 1.5 weeks).

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Well,

 

The GOOD news is this board will happily recognise the 500Gb SATA2 drives and show them accordingly. That's a great start.

 

However, when I try to boot from the unRAID USB device I get the following...

 

GRUB Loading stage1.5.

 

GRUB loading, please wait...

Error 5

 

 

...and that's it. Doesn't go any further. I've tried this on Beta 3 and Beta 4 - still get the same error message.

 

Can anyone help?

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  • 4 weeks later...

Upgraded, to two 500GB;s and a 250 gb S2 drives also added an S300 TX4 promise controller. I figured with 400 DVD's to rip that I will be adding more drives rather quickly. So I wanted to get the biggest parity drive in there to start.

 

They went in no problem - OH other then I had bought a 400W (advertised) power supply - why I went on the cheap I do not know but anyway, installed 500Gb drives no power (would start and then shutdown) Installed an Antec 500W smartpower2 which I have in all my other machines.

 

I set the 500 Gbs on the M/B sata ports 2 to parity and disk1 and the 250 as disk 2 in the 1st port of the promise controller. It is still building parity on the drive as I type this.

 

Regards,

 

Dave

Ottawa, CA

 

 

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