SATA2 backwards compatibility

I expected to have my SATA1 HDD's working properly on my SATA2 motherboard, but they didn't. For anyone of interest, here is the answer given by Shuttle support. The (two) problems i experienced are below, and seem directly related to the lack of legacy support. Not that it should support it, i just expected it to.  IMHO innovation shouldn´t be hold back by (over the top) legacy support.

Dear Shuttle customer,

As you wrote your HDDs have the old SATA-150 specification. Many old HDD
have trouble with new SATA-300 controller. Do you have any SATA-300 HDD
for test? First the BIOS have to recognize the HDD correctly.

After RAID config (that you did not do because your HDDs do not work)
the Windows installation asks for RAID driver. Later you can install
the Matrix Manager in Windows. Necessary for all RAID related driver
and software is the BIOS. The ICH10R has to switched to "RAID" or "AHCI"
mode. If the controller is set to IDE, the driver refuses the install.

The driver is an original Intel driver. Bugs are not known at present.

Please don't hesitate to contact us, if you have any other questions.

---
Best Regards
Shuttle Support

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barry***@****.nl schrieb:

Contact Information

Name： Barry Staes
Email： barry***@*******.nl
Location： Netherlands


Product Information

Model Name： SX58H7
System ID： sx58h700-B00-13 Serial Number： sx58h700******00044
BIOS： default
Purchased from： alternate.nl Purchased date： 2009/10/08


Configuration Information

Item Model Note
CPU model： Intel Core i7 920
Memory model： 6GB
HDD model： Kingston SSDNow V Series 64GB
Display Card model： ASUS
CD ROM model： Atapi IDE
Network Card model： -
OS model： Windows 7
Others： I want to use two Samsung 200GB (SATA150) drives in raid. These get recognized & work fine in any other system.


Problems Encountered or Other Notes
Two problems. For starters the system works fine with only SSD in various OS's, and i wanted to attach two HDD's in RAID0 (both Samsung 200GB SATA150) to get more storage.

Problem #1
I connected these but the bios doesn't mention them, windows doesn't see them.

So i tried changing the bios setting for the controller from IDE to RAID. After applying the system powers down abruptly and powers up with the new configuration. The first bootscreen takes 10 minutes while trying (failing) to detect AHCI 0 and up. Eventually instead of windows it just resets, and when i pressed DEL in the meanwile the BIOS menu will b presented. Still with the RAID setting though.
If i change it to AHCI, same thing. This is an issue, i'm not able to boot (at all) with these drives working! Disconnecting the SSD doesn't change anything.

I tried resolving this problem by installing the drives for Windows 7, and visited the support site. The bundled CD had two programs that refused to work. More below.

Problem #2
I can't install the drivers from the CD, so i tried the website. I select Windows 7 on support page
http://global.shuttle.com/download03.jsp?PI=1219&OS=7
and tried the RAID related installations. One throws a "system doesn't meet requirements" error right after launching, the other doesn't have anything Windows 7 recognizes as installable.

Please address these problems, as i want to run RAID in my SX58H7. Its why i bought this system.

I am really looking forward to your response as i've hit this wall after owning the Shuttle system for only a few days.

Any suggestions are welcome. I beleive this might be a bug in the driver installation software.

Thank you,
Barry Staes

I might make a habit of putting support information on my blog, if its relevant to most and useful to one soul i´m happy.