[Gllug] SATA - new drives and old BIOSes not compatible?

[- Tethys]

On 1/17/07, Richard Jones <rich at annexia.org> wrote:

> I bought a new WD SATA drive from a reputable supplier, but
> unfortunately it doesn't seem to be detected by my two year old
> computer with onboard SATA (Via VT8237).
>
> Are there known problems with new drives and old motherboards, as in
> the IDE days?  I find it hard to believe that this drive would be DOA.

Yes. There should be a jumper on the drive to drop it down to 1.5Gb/s.
Modern disks default to 3Gb/s (often incorrectly called SATA II), and
the morons that designed SATA didn't think to specify that a disk
should drop to the lower speed automatically if the controller can't
handle the higher speed. Yes, speed autonegotiation is part of the
SATA standard, but it's not mandatory, and I've yet to find a drive
vendor that supports it.

Not that I'm bitter about having been bitten by this before. Sigh.
Come back SCSI, all is forgiven...

Tet
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