Help configuring BIOS correctly - gigabyte ga-p35-ds3 with sata drives

Hi all,

New here; so G'day!

I am reasonably familiar with hardware basics but my main strengths have always laid on the software side.

I have begun to build a new system for general + HTPC duties and am a little confused about the way that the gigabyte mobo handles my drives.

The physical configuration is thus:

• 3 x 500GB Samsung 7200RPM Sata (thrash Drives)
• 1 x 80GB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM Sata system drive
• 1 x BD/DVD/CD etc Sata Optical
• 1 x DVD/CD etc Sata Optical

Now the mobo has three pairs of sata data sockets. two pairs are yellow (1,2/3,4) and the third is purple.

I have been finding I get radically different behaviour when it comes to the BIOS settings related to Native vs Legacy IDE mode and IDE/RAID etc configurations in the advanced integrated pheripherals bios section.

For example I don't want my drives to show up in legacy mode - under linux they represent as /dev/hda / hdb etc but don't support DMA. Obviously I want to use native Sata so I set that and find that the systems will only properly recognise the drives that are plugged into channel 5&6;

with other settings I find that live cds will boot on the optical BD disc but only as far as the kernel mdev section when I get reports of no available media for mounting...

So, I am a bit in the dark about what bios settings I need to get all my drives available and in the correct order to give me:

• 1 Boot and System disk - the 80GB Seagate - on which I will build my Gentoo Linux - several ext2 and ext3 partitions
• 3 500GB media/thrash/data disks - probably XFS - and maybe down the track I would consider ganging them up in a RAID array for redundancy and/or performance but that is a separate project.
• 2 Optical discs the BD one as a primary that can be used as the CD boot drive if I am not booting from the System disk.

I have enough sata ports and can't see that a p35 mobo won't support everything I want to do...

Could someone please guide me through the configuration options in the bios so that I can get an optimal setup.

These are the options I have been fiddling with:

In standard CMOS I get this:

Code:

IDE Channel 0 Master Samsung 500
IDE Chennel 1 Master Samsung 500
IDE Channel 2 Master Samsung 500
IDE Channel 3 Master Pioneer DVD-RW DVR
IDE Channel 4 Master [ None ]
IDE Channel 4 Slave  [ None ]
IDE Channel 5 Master Seagate 80
IDE Channel 5 Slave Pioneer BD-ROM BDC

and this is due to having the yellow sata sockets populated:

• 0,1 Samsung 500 + Samsung 500
• 2,3 Samsung 500 + Pioneer DVD-RW

and the purple sockets:

• 4,5 Seagate 80 + Pioneer BD

Clearly In the advanced CMOS settings I have enabled HDD S.M.A.R.T. Capability

Integrated Pheripherals:

Code:

SATA AHCI Mode - Disabled (option is AHCI - enable sata as ahci function)
SATA Port0-1 Native Mode - Enabled (this has me a bit sus because it looks like not all the ports are of the same capability on this mobo - alternative is disabled - Sata port0-1 work at Legacy IDE Mode - and this gave me /dev/hda device without any DMA capability)
Onboard SATA/IDE Device - Enabled (options are enable or disabled) 
Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode - IDE (options are IDE, AHCI or RAID/IDE - if I select RAIDE/IDE I get devices showing up as scsi)

Various combinations of these settings have given me mixed milage from having legacy IDE Drives without DMA able to be set; to drives not showing up and/or boot failing half way through.

What other settings would I need to report to help get to the bottom of this.

In the mean time I am reading and researching this aspect of the systems with which I am unfamiliar...

TIA
Will

 

What are the full specs of this system, including power supply?

 

OK, the mobo is in a CoolerMaster case and I am using the standard power supply that came with the case (for convenience) RS-430-PCAR - CoolerMaster.

I have 2G of 800MHz DDR2 Ram

The Video is a Gigabyte GeForce 8400GS - passive cooling

Intel E6750 - Intel Core2Duo 2.66GHz

Stock CPU HeatSync and Fan.

Mobo Spec books states:

South Bridge:
4 x sata 3Gb/s connectors (SataII0, SataII1, SataII4, SataII5) supporting up to 4 Sata 3Gb/s devices
Gigabyte Sata 2 Chip:
1 ide connector
2 sata 3Gb/s connectors (GSataII0,GSataII1) supporting up to 2 3Gb/s devices and support for sata raid0,1 and JBOD

I take it that this GSataII pair is the other colour sockets on the system board and the other two pairs are the SouthBridge ones...
I guess the JMicron is the chipset for the GSataII and the Intel will be the other pair on the P35 SouthBridge... When I do an lspci in linux the JMicron is identified but the Intel ones are unclear.

Code:

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 2 port SATA IDE controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 2 port SATA IDE controller (rev 02)
03:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technologies, Inc. JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI Controller (rev 02) 

What are the implications of all this ??

 

It appears from my reading that mobo's offer two kinds of SATA connections - and im not sure why - but there are the mainboard chipset connections - in this case the 4 Intel SouthBridge P35 ones and then a secondary set offered by the gigabyte mobo in this case the JMicron Chipset.

How is this going to effect my OS detection of the drives, which drives should I have on what channels and will Linux have difficulty supporting the config shown in the lspci above??