[Niroy]

Hello. I've recently bought a new WD scorpio black 7200 320GB but it wasn't identified by my Amilo 3438. I tried to flash bios to 1.11 but nothing changed. One person from a computer shop told me that the problem is that this hard drive has 7200 rpm and if it had 5400 my notebook would identify it. It might be so and i read a bit german topic about amilo 3438 and different hard drives for that model and understood that this hard drive wouldn't work on my notebook, but i believe that if i change my motherboard to the one from Amilo Xi1526/Xi1546/Xi1554 (it is 100% compatible with my m3438g) everything will be fine.
You might say it is worthless, but i've already been thinking about upgrading my 3438 and bought a new core2duo cpu yet, so it is normal for me to buy a used Amilo Xi1526/Xi1546/Xi1554 motherboard as it was my plan.

Here and Here i've found some info about this hard drive and desired motherboard and i guess it is compatible but i need more info if it is so or not...
Thanks for your replies...

[grifter]

hi NIROY. I have just bought 2 WD Scorpio Blue 160GB SATA 150 after my old hard drive had probably SMART failure and they are working fine. What i have found out Black series of WD are SATA 2 (3GB/s) which m3438g doesnt support and not because its 7200 but because of sata 2. So what you can try to do to make it working is to put a pin to downgrade it to work as old sata 150 and not 300. Thats the advise that other users gave me because i was also considering buying the same hdd as you. Good luck and come back with info if it worked.

[zipper]

http://secure.ncix.c...hreadid=1081002
Check the HD manual.

[Niroy]

I still need your help...

[zipper]

This is what I could find with a quick search:

Given the importance of backward compatibility between SATA 1.5 Gbit/s controllers and SATA 3 Gbit/s devices, SATA 3 Gbit/s autonegotiation sequence is designed to fall back to SATA 1.5 Gbit/s speed when in communication with such devices. In practice, some older SATA controllers do not properly implement SATA speed negotiation. Affected systems require the user to set the SATA 3 Gbit/s peripherals to 1.5 Gbit/s mode, generally through the use of a jumper, however some drives lack this jumper. Chipsets known to have this fault include the VIA VT8237 and VT8237R southbridges, and the VIA VT6420, VT6421A and VT6421L standalone SATA controllers.[10] SiS's 760 and 964 chipsets also initially exhibited this problem, though it can be rectified with an updated SATA controller ROM.

So, if your drive has no jumper, check your controller chipset if it's a problematic one.

Search WD info here:
http://www.wdc.com/en/library/

[Niroy]

zipper, on 11 November 2009 - 01:51 PM, said:

This is what I could find with a quick search:

Given the importance of backward compatibility between SATA 1.5 Gbit/s controllers and SATA 3 Gbit/s devices, SATA 3 Gbit/s autonegotiation sequence is designed to fall back to SATA 1.5 Gbit/s speed when in communication with such devices. In practice, some older SATA controllers do not properly implement SATA speed negotiation. Affected systems require the user to set the SATA 3 Gbit/s peripherals to 1.5 Gbit/s mode, generally through the use of a jumper, however some drives lack this jumper. Chipsets known to have this fault include the VIA VT8237 and VT8237R southbridges, and the VIA VT6420, VT6421A and VT6421L standalone SATA controllers.[10] SiS's 760 and 964 chipsets also initially exhibited this problem, though it can be rectified with an updated SATA controller ROM.

So, if your drive has no jumper, check your controller chipset if it's a problematic one.

Search WD info here:
http://www.wdc.com/en/library/

Thanks for the reply! You write: "however some drives lack this jumper". My drive has no jumper but if i buy it can I pin the hard drive to work as SATA I? What do you think?

Update: the drive is locked to work only in SATA2 mode and cant be used in SATA1 mode

This post has been edited by Niroy: 12 November 2009 - 01:36 AM