Largest SATA drive for K8N Neo4 Platinum

I have a system based on the K8N Neo4 Platinum board, I'm planning to up, the storage capacity of my rig and was wondering if I can install a 500 GB or larger SATA or SATA II drive on it?
to make long story short I would like to know whats the largest Hard Drive (either IDE or SATA) one can install on a system with this board without problems or compatibility issues.
I presently have a Maxtor Diamond Plus 80GB SATA drive,
Any takers??? ???

I see no problems, just try it.
As for a Sata-II drive, don't take Maxtor, any other drive should be fine.
However, you maybe must jumper it to SATA-1, depends on the onboard controller.

Similar Messages

HELP! Installation of SATA HD on K8N NEO4 PLATINUM

I finally put together my system
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ venice
MSI K8N NEO4 Platinum
1 GB DDR400 RAM
Etc....
now my problem has to do with the SATA hard drive i bought for it, a maxtor diamondmax10 6L080MO, my system will boot and say "invalid drive" and will tell me to go into the RAID Tool.
I really dont know much about sata interface setup so i would appreciate a step by step walkthru on it, right know im forced to use my old reliable maxtor 20gb,
is it possible to have both the 20gb ata hd and the new 80gb sata drives? how do i install my sata drive?
i was planning on using the small one for software installation and the big sata one for storage
everything on my system is running well so far, except for the SATA drive problem,
PLEASE HELP!

Ceckardt,
You should not need to install any special drives with single SATA that not in a RIAD Array, if you have Windows XP SP2 installed, if you do not have SP2 installed, upgraded to it before doing anything I instruct you to do below.
If you using just SATA hard drive, all you should have to do is plug it in to one of the nVidia SATA connectors on the motherboard and if you have Windows up and running on the old 20GB Maxtor. Start windows and open the Disk Management Window. You get there by right clicking My Computer, menu will pop-up and left click “Manage” a Window will open and on the list on the left side of the call Computer Management, left click “Disk Management”. On the right of the Window you should see all of you drive of you system including you new 80GB SATA drive. You will have to Partition and format it, then it will show in My Computer as logical drive, the drive letter you will have assigned in the Disk Management.
If you need instructions, other the Windows Help to partition and format your drive under the disk manager, just reply or if the drive is list in the disk manage window and you cannot figure out how to partition and format the just start a new post asking for help using the Disk Manager.
If the drive is not listed in the Disk management Window, reply in the post for more help.
Good luck,
Roger

Thermaltake Silent Purepower 480W for K8N NEO4 Platinum

after much debacle of what psu to propel my MSI K8N NEO4 Platinum (Non SLI model) it has become clear to me that the only real choice i have within my reach is the thermaltake silentpurepower 480w, this is simply the best power supply i can get down here (Colombia, South America) and the most expensive one too.
i have done my fair share of research on the matter and have found a number of people using this power supply to power systems based on the K8N NEO4 Platinum, even some have been bold enough to use the SLI version of the board with this power supply.
so i guess its go for broke time on the matter, any feedback ?

Quote from: Stick on 26-January-06, 23:13:33
i have the buterfly model http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/2005/purepower/W001920.htm
it has a 20 pin connector and a 20 to 24 pin convertor, so you can plug it in both ways
from what ive seen its the same psu with different accesories, but its the same psu, so i guess this is it. Im gonna connect the 20pin to the 24 connector in the motherboard as those 20 to 24 adapters dont seen to generate any kind of trust in me, i guess as long as i keep my present setup and i dont overclock everything should run just fine.
many thanks...

Driver Downloads K8N Neo4 Platinum

I purchased a machine w/MSI Neo4 Platinum (MS-7125) already installed but advertised as new. Did an install of Win XP Pro w/o a hitch. Machine is up and running however have no audio and wonder if drivers were ever loaded, and I do not have the MSI install disc. Am shown as running BIOS 1.06 and based on this forum will not be doing any upgrade to it; bringing me to ask the question should I download drivers from MSI; have read numerous problems associated with LiveUpdate? I have never done a BIOS or any other system download and install; so, how do I do this? Have read on this forum that “flashing” the BIOS direct using MSI Live Update is a bad idea; what’s the alternative method(s) for other drivers, particularly nVidia’s audio driver (how do I uninstall existing)? Last question, Windows is showing the USB ports as 1.1 vs. 2.0; why is this driver related as well? Sorry, I'm a real rookie at this stuff actually surprised that I have all hardwre up and running.

Pops,
I don't believe you! We must share brainwaves. I went up on the "free" site last night! Fotunately I was using the backup SATA drive as "free" ain't free!!!!! Came bundled with a bunch of pop-ups that I had to agree to accept in order to run the software; I did it; the software would not run, but the pop-ups certainly did!!. So after that little exercise I decided if Cyberlink was what you used, so would I! Unbelievably I went to the site you suggested and ordered last nite; it was an OEM version, on sale @ $3.99 plus five or six dollars shipping. So - it's on the way.
A quick FYI which you probably are aware of; I have a lot of (maybe too much) experience with OEM software - specifically: XP (most recent), Ghost, and Nero. What I have found is you can forget any kind of support; further, the software is stripped with downloads available only if you purchase an upgrade. In the case of Nero, I bought it pretty much in order to create bootable CD'S which it does; however, I'm beginning to doubt whether it's DVD playback capability is there, perhaps a source of the problem I am experiencing - the software loads and just stays there, no error messages, nothing! Similarly, I bought Ghost because I wanted V. 2003 which runs under DOS; in order to get it I had to buy the OEM version 9.0. no problem, it works just fine but Symantec no longer services or offers support except on a fee per incident basis. Downside then is that I expect Cyberlink to probably decode DVD's but to stop right there as far as add on features which you probably have - that's what you get when you pay $10 for $40 software and I'm not going to complain!
In the meantime, I have found a reputable OEM seller of boards dealing primarily in MSI/Nvidia. I can get an MSI NX6600-TD256E for $79 delivered which sounds like a smoking deal I think. The caveat is, no installation CD - says this can be downloded from MSI. Guess what, I went to MSI earlier this evening; they're right, the downloads are there but I couldn't download them! The site let me download the manual but not the driver or the utility. I thought this was pretty strange and left a note with MSI Customer Support advising them of the problem (presumably with their site). So this remains on pend.
The same company offers a Gigabyte GV-NX62TC256DE (6200TC); thought this might be OK as well (uses Nvidia chipset). As a followup went to Gigabyte's site and was able to download manual, drivers and utilities. This card is dirt cheap $39 delivered. Thing that appeals to me a little about this one, in addition to being less $$$, is that it doesn't require additional power. I've read many stories on this forum re: low amps on the 12v rail(s) causing stability and no run problems. My PSU is only cranking out 14 amps total which is pretty low I believe, hence, I worry that if I go with a card like the MSI, I may put myself in a position of needing a larger PSU - more $$.
What do you think?
I really appreciate all of your input, as always - Thank you, Larry Allen

Novice - How To Install SATA Drive on K8N Neo2 Platinum

My current 2 SATA drives are almost at max capacity and hooked up to SATA 3 & 4 slots. How do I go about installing a new SATA drive on slot 1 or 2? I thought SATA was plug n play and all I had to do was enable SATA ports 1 to 4 in BIOS. I've searched online and found articles pertaining to limitations on SATA slots 1&2, RAID configuration, VT8237 & Promise 20579 drivers --- and I am utterly confused
This is the hard drive that I've been eyeing. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16822148144 I only want to attach it to a bay in my PC and use it as storage, not install Windows. Can someone provide clear cut directions for a novice like me on how to install it?

Enable the sata ports, which you intend to use with it.
Jumper drive to sata I mode.
Connect new drive.
Boot into windows and go to disk management where you will see it listed.
You will need to partition and format it there.
Once completed it will show up in My Computer and be ready to use.
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1778&page=6

K8N Neo4 Platinum, how to move MBR to sata (make it drive #1)?

I am not sure I am phrasing the question correctly, so bear with me. I have a K8N Neo4 platinum with the SiI3114 controller and sata ports 4-8 (I believe its what they are calling PCB 1.x) with bios v1.D. I moved the board to another box and installed winXP on it. I was running it with IDE hard drives. Everything was working great but the OS was running really slow so I bought a SATA 300 mb/s drive and pluged it into SATA1 (I read about using ports 3 and 4 for raid but I do not want to use the NVraid at all, it is disabled). Then I proceeded to reinstall win XP. In the setup, I deleted the original C partiton and created one on the sata drive and rebooted so that there would be no "C" drive confusion by the winxp setup (have had that problem before and this keeps it from happening). Went through the setup and the sata was correctly reported as "C". Told windows to install itself there but it told me that it needed to write to MBR on the old c drive but that, since I had deleted the partiton, it couldn't and had to format it. So I knew that something was wrong.
So I rebooted and disabled the ide bus that contained the old IDE drive and just left the CD ide bus enabled. WinXP installed fine with no complaints. Then it rebooted and I re-enabled the ide bus in the bios. It wouldn't boot into the partiton I just installed winxp on! To get it to boot, I had to use F11 (the bios boot menu) and select the sata drive. Went through the whole setup winXP thing and rebooted. Same problem, it wouldn't boot the sata drive. :(
As long as that ide bus with the old ide drive is enabled, it won't boot the sata drive! I have rearranged the boot order on the bios every way possible. I opened up the box and moved that ide chain with the old ide drive to the ide2 port and put the dvd drive on ide1. I made the old drive slave and the prior slave master. That didn't fix it either. How do I tell this motherboard that the 1st drive is the sata drive? How do I tell it the MBR should be there not on the old ide drive? How do I fix this? Thanks!

Thank you for your replies! Hans, thank you I will give it a go again doing full formats all the way. I usually use the full format when installing winXP but I did things in a different order than you instructed so I will definately try it.
Aicjofs, thank you, There are 3 hard drives in this system currently. There is the ide hard drive that used to be the "c" drive (a western digital 160gb ata133 7200rpm 8mb cache) and a second ide hard drive that is an extended partition with 1 logical drive with data on it (western digital 300gb ata133 7200rpm 8mb cache). Then there is a sata hard drive in sata1 port with 2 partitions one primary and one extended. The extended partion does have data on it as I moved stuff there after I got winXP up the 2nd time (western digital 250gb sata II 7200rpm 16mg cache). Right now, I have the ide drive with data on it as ide2 master and the old "c" drive as ide2 slave and it is unformatted and contains no partion information (I deleted the partition after I installed the SATA drive and installed winXP). XP won't boot. What happens is that, if I take the winxp cd out, it gives me a "no system" error. If I leave the WinXP cd in it boots that disk. However, if I use "f11" and choose to boot the sata drive, winxp comes up just fine. If I disable the ide bus with the two ide hard drives, it boots winxp just fine.
Edit: bios is v1.D. It feels like this mobo is telling windows setup that the master ide drive is the first disk and to ignore everything else. It feels like if I can just tell the mobo that the sata drive is the first disk then everything will work . It is late night where I am now, and I've been fighting with this since the afternoon so I might have to goto sleep but I will be back at it tomorrow and will go though what Hans instructed. If anyone has any otehr ideas, I'd really appreciate that as well.

XP64bit installation halts, K8N Neo4 Platinum - No SATA drives found?

My setup:
Athlon 64 3500+
K8N Neo4 Platinum
2GB OCZ 3200 Premier
2) WD Sata 80GB HD's (for RAID 0)
Nvidia 6800GT Extreme VGA
I was recently lucky enough to get my hands on a real Windows XP Pro64bit Extended Edition. I gathered quite a few 64bit drivers which claim to do the job (so they say.)
However I ran into a very strange issue during installation.
My main concern was getting RAID drivers to utilize after pressing F6 during the Windows install. Unfortunately I could not find Nvidia drivers so I went with the Silicon Image Sil3114 64bit drivers I got from their website. Copied them to a disk and thought I was ready to rock N roll. I have updated all BIOS to latest versions as of the date of this post.
Now I went into the RAID BIOS and setup my RAID 0 Array and both SATA drives are shown. All went well in this dept.
I began my installtion of XP64 and pressed F6 to install the RAID drivers. Popped the floppy in and the driver files were copied successfully.
I continued on to the point where you are prompted to setup Windows XP and it searches for any previous installs.
I continue to where I should get the dislmaimer and to press F8, however the install halts and say no hard drives were found. Setup cannot continue.
Any ideas as to why my drives are not being detected during installation? They show up fine under the RAID setup BIOS.
Any info or thoughts is truly appreciated.

You need to make your own floppy for the nvidia 64 ide drivers.
How to install Windows on SATA using F6 to load Drivers
Follow item 1 Obviously usinfg the Neo4 64bit unified driver pack Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
luck

SATA drives not being detected - K8N Neo4 Platinum

I have the same problem, different PSU!
msi k8n neo4 platinum pcb 1.0
3000 64 939
corsair 1gb dual channel ddr400
nvidia 8800gts
antec truepower 550 (19a @ 12v)
used to run 2 ide maxtor 120 and 80
added in a sata dvd writer, worked for 6 months
added in a sata 1TB seagate 7200, sata fails a majority of the time
same symptons now persist as in original post.
:< either bios detects both sata drives, neither, or it crashes. this happens respectively rarely, uncommon, and most common
what ive tried:
updated all mainboard, bios, video drivers to the most up to date (i had to in order for bios to detect the full size of the 1TB)
no ide, same problems
only 1 sata, with and without ide, same problems
the sata only works after a long period of time (or randomly), that i dont use it
(ive had both sata unplugged for 12 hours, booted up this morning with them and it detected, i selected safe mode boot, after making it through a majority of the load, it crashed)
testing a new psu in a day or so, much more powerful. ill give you all my results.

The cables aren't overly bent?
"...worked for 6 months"
"...fails a majority of the time"
Not very relevant, but since i found the FAQs, and there are no less than four FAQs for hard disks http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=prodfaq&maincat_no=1&cat2_no=&cat3_no=&prod_no=165#menu :
"Silicon Image Si3114R Raid bios doesn't have JBOD setting in it, why?
In the new Silicon Image BIOS, JBOD already been renamed as "Concatenation".
If you want to use single SATA HDD or when tou want use each SATA HDD as IDE mode, you can choose "Concatenation" function in Silicon RAID BIOS."
"I am using a SATA hard drive with NCQ technology on this motherboard and I am experiencing problems. How do I fix it?
The issue depends on the Southbridge chipset. Nvidia is currently working on an updated nForce driver to address the issues with certain hard drives.
You could contact Nvidia support to ask for the new driver if there is one. If there is not any new driver to solve the issue, please disable NCQ on your system." /My fattening. /

New K8N Neo4 Platinum build. Help, Nforce4 driver question?

I am building a new K8N Neo4 Platinum system (see my sig). I wanted to get the latest Nforce4 drivers, before installing XP. I noticed on the Nvidia website a 5.10 Unified Driver download and a 6.66 AMD download. Which should I use? It looks like the versions in the 5.10 Unified Driver are actually older than what is in the Nforce4 drivers, from the MSI site. If I use the 6.66 AMD drivers, should I make a SATA Raid Driver floppy, from them, to use during the XP install? Any advice is appreciated.

just do it from a floppy, LiveUpdate is crap
and yes you HAVE to F6 these drivers on Windows install if you plan on using SATA or you cannot boot from SATA
unfied drivers are NOT FOR NFORCE 4. You MUST use the NF4-specific 6.66 (or earlier)
Unified Drivers are specific only to nForce 1/2/3. AMD and Intel each have specific and unique driver sets for nForce4.
download 6.66, extract and explore the folder
go to IDE->Win2K->SATARAID and copy everything in this folder to a floppy
make two floppies just to be safe
you cannot use CD, you MUST use floppy because Windows will look in a: only
as soon as Windows install starts you will see a screen that says "Press F6 to install third party SCSI or RAID driver"... hit F6 and insert floppy and after a few minutes, you will get a screen that says"
"Press S to install other drivers..."
press S
next screen comes up, first select and install "nVidida Raid class driver (required)" -->hit enter
back to "Press S to install other drivers..." screen
press S again
screen wil come up again, this time choose and install ""nVidia nforce storage controller(required)"
one more time back to "press S to instal other drivers...", this time just hit ENTER
now you're good to go

X2 3800+ (E6) support for the K8N Neo4 Platinum/SLI

Hi everyone:
I have decided to purchase the K8N Neo4 Platinum/SLI (MS-7100-020) and I ready placed the order. However, I wonder if it supports the AMD X2 3800+ (E6 Version) CPU? The reason I asked the question because I found the following table from the Taiwan MSI web site which shows that X2 3800+ E6 is undertesting.
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_cpu_support_detail.php?UID=641&kind=1
Thank you for any replies.

Mine worked, ran for 2 weeks already at stock, tried & ran to 2.2GHz on stock HSF with no problem.
Using X2 3800+ E6, MSI K8N PLI Platinum mobo, 3.7 bios & Inno3D 7800GTX single latest nvidia 78 drivers, 2x512MB DDR400 CL2.5 Kingston Ram, Hitachi T7K250 Sata 250GB HDD, NEC ND-3530A Benq 1640, , Silverstone Zeus 650W PSU
At first I have this concern too, but tried it anyway.
See my screenshots for your info.

Building system for friend with K8N Neo4 Platinum

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice (ADA3200CGBOX)
CT2KIT12864Z40B (2x1GB)
eVGA 256-P2-N516 (7800GT)
WD2500KS (250GB SATAII HDD)
ATXA9N-SS/500 (Case)
Aspire 120MM
Aspire 80MM
ND-3550A (DVD-RW)
TG-480-U22 (PSU)
Can anyone recommend BIOS and drivers I should preload to a CD? I would rather not install from retail CDs only to download new ones.
Are there any other concerns or things I should know of?
Thanks!

Quote from: Kwea on 10-January-06, 23:21:38
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice (ADA3200CGBOX)
CT2KIT12864Z40B (2x1GB)
eVGA 256-P2-N516 (7800GT)
WD2500KS (250GB SATAII HDD)
ATXA9N-SS/500 (Case)
Aspire 120MM
Aspire 80MM
ND-3550A (DVD-RW)
TG-480-U22 (PSU)
Can anyone recommend BIOS and drivers I should preload to a CD? I would rather not install from retail CDs only to download new ones.
Are there any other concerns or things I should know of?
Thanks!
You can use CD drivers (if needed to get connected to net) and update. because of the item on CD will be out dated
I'am using V1.09 BIOS, Nforce 666, GFX 7772 works good for me

K8N Neo4 Platinum not detecting hard drive

Hi,
what may cause a K8N Neo4 Platinum to not detect an IDE hard drive? no matter what i try the mobo never sees the hard drive.

welcome to the forum
1) What Hard drive - size & make
2) How connected - By itself as Master or slave.
3) What other ide devices.
it's a lot easier when u post some specs & we can quit the guessing games.

BSOD's on my x64 K8N Neo4 Platinum based PC, Any ideas what's wrong? Help!

Over the past few month I've been getting BSOD's. There is no real pattern to their occurence and it's not something which is constantly happening (It happened around 5 times in the past 2 months), but I've really grown to hate them. You see, after getting one what has happened in the past is that when I go to restart my pc after getting a BSOD, I find I need to re-install my whole OS! What happens is that after booting (which oddly enough doesn't work well after a BSOD, It freezes on the boot screen and I need to restart several times), a black screen appears telling me that certain files in the C:Windows\ direcotory are corrupt or missing.
So the real problem is that the BSOD's cause me to re-install my whole OS. One will happen, then it will be ok, I turn the system on, log into windows, then it might happen again, after which I'll need to re-install. The files that go missing are always different too, and when I run scan-disk (after plugging in my main drive into another computer) it finds corrupt files and deletes them.
At first I thought it was Azureus (p2p client) which was causing the problems because it seemed to happen when I was runing that. I stopped using it, and the BSOD's still occured...sometimes randomly when browsing...etc. I figured that since files got deleted and corrpupted, it must be a problem withthe Hard Drive....So I bought a new one, and I've still had the BSOD error (although files haven't been deleted yet).
So yeah, I really need to solve this problem as it is taking away from my productivity and causing me to re-install far too often. I will post the BSOD info as well as my system info below (and a screen shot):
Quote
MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION
*** STOP: 0x0000009c (0x0000000000000004,0xFFFFF80000113BC0, 0x00000000B2000000, 0x0000000000070F0F)
I looked that up on the net, and it seems the first part seems to indicate, or at least COULD indicate overheating. I checked CPU and System temps and they seem acceptable.
I am running Windows XP x64 Edition with the following hardware (please note that all of the hardware drivers I'm using are written for x64, MSI is so good:)). I have had this PC before it started having these problems, it could be related to using x64 I guess, but the error doesn't show that does it?
Quote
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0 GHz Socket 939 (Venice Core) w/ stock heatsink/fan
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum S-939 nForce4 Ultra
OCZ PC-3200 DDR400 Premier Series 1GB (2x512MB) Dual Channel Kit CAS 2.5
Ati Radeon x800xl 256MB gddr3, PCI-E
LG 17" L1720B LCD monitor 16ms, 1280x1024
Western Digital Caviar 120GB SATA
Western Digital Caviar SATA II (WD1600JS) 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Buffer
Western Digital Caviar SATA II (WD2500KS) 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Buffer
Pioneer DVR-109 DVD-RW
Pioneer DVR-110D DVD-RW
Antec Sonata II Mid tower ATX black power supply 450 Watt ( ATX12V 2.01 )
Creative I-Trigue 2.1 L3450 speakers
Sony 1.44MB Floppy Disk Drive
Microsoft multimedia keyboard and Microsoft optical mouse (PS/2)
My OS and drivers are fully updated. As for my BIOS I've been running the version I'm using now forquite some time and I believe it is version 1.5. Also in another bad turn of events, my northbridge fan seems to be on its way out of this world (this just happned so I don't think its related to the BSOD). I haven't been able to find a replacement, and since its not spinning very fast, and sometimes stops...It's causing the heatsink to get quite hot. I need to get a new one, and I can't find them anywhere...I wonder if thats covered under warranty... I looked into getting a different heatsink, but my Graphics card is so colse to this heatsink, that theres no room for a bigger one at all.
Do you think this problem is motherboard related, I cannot understand what the technical info the BSOD gives me means, can anybody understand it? I don't think its my HD's, or Ram, or CPU...could it be a motherboard problem? And if so, its under 1 year old, can I get an RMA?
Thanks for the help in advance.

At one time I had a weak 450w psu that had only 18a on the 12v rail. When I overclocked my cpu and gpu, I was getting bsod's every once in a while and couldnt figure it out until I read a similar post like yours on this forum. I decided to upgrade my psu and havent had that problem since.
Power supplies can be deceiving. I now have a 480w psu but its has 30a on the 12v rail. So what we need to know is the ratings of your psu (see my sig) just to see if your psu is the culprit. Just my 2 cents.

Constant HDD access (K8N Neo4 Platinum)

Hello all, this is my first time posting on these forums.
A couple of days ago I put together a new system for myself, with the following components:
* Athlon64 3200+ processor
* MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum motherboard
* 1Gb RAM
* Gigabyte 128Mb GeForce 6600GT graphics card
* 2x Seagate 250Gb 7200rpm SATA drives
* LG IDE dual-layer DVD-RW drive
* Apacer 7-in-1 internal USB 2.0 card reader
* Thermaltake "soprano" ATX midi-tower w/ 400W PSU
The two hard drives I have connected to ports SATA5 and SATA6 on the motherboard and set up in a RAID1 configuration (using the on-board Silicon Image SiI 3114 RAID controller). I then installed Windows XP Professional, which went on fine. The only problem I have now is that the hard drives are being constantly accessed by the system, even when I'm doing nothing on the system. This isn't just an occasional access once every second or so, the little HDD LED just flickers away merrily the whole time. I have run both filemon and diskmon on the system, and found that while no particular files appear to be being accessed, there is almost constant write activity being performed to the hard drives.
I have narrowed it down to somehow involving the Windows XP RAID drivers. If I boot from the Windows XP install disk and load the third party drivers for the SiI 3114, I get the constant disk access when sitting at the first screen of the install process ("Welcome to Windows XP" text-only screen). If I do the same without loading the drivers (thus Windows does not recognise the RAID drive), no disk access. I have tried updating the RAID controller drivers under the Device Manager (now up to version 1.2.0.0), but it does not fix the problem. I have done a full virus and spyware scan (bearing in mind that this is a clean install), with no results. I have checked all running processes and services (including making sure Indexing Service is not running), but have been unable to find anything that could be causing this constant activity. I have yet to try actually breaking the mirror and running the drives off the normal SATA controller. I will be trying that tonight when I get home if no other solution presents itself, but obviously I would rather get it behaving properly in RAID1 if at all possible.
It's driving me crazy. There doesn't appear to be any actual issues with the performance of the machine, but the constant hard disk activity can't be good for the drives long-term. I have searched these forums for a possible solution, and while some people have had similar problems, none of the suggested solutions have worked for me so far. If anyone can help me with my dilemma, I would be Eternally Grateful(tm).

Yes! At least I'm not alone... constant disk ticking is driving me nuts too.
I have same issue with a newly built system - different board but Sil3114.
My C: is on the NF4 SATA interface, but I have 4 250GB Seagaets on the Sil3114, intended for a RAID5 array. Having installed XP, I've become distracted by the constant disk access and have been trying everything to eliminate it before proceeding with the rest of the build - nogo. Your post gave me the clue - boot with Sil3114 disabled = no disk activity; boot with enabled = constant disk flogging.
I've got the Sil driver up to 1.2.3.1 but no better. Suspect it may be the Sil3114 BIOS that needs upgrading but seems no way to flash it - have you got anywhere with your debugging?
Appreciate a solution before I go crazy with the tick, tick tick....

IDE cables bundled with K8N Neo4 Platinum--80 wire or 40 wire?

Is the rounded IDE cable that comes with the K8N Neo4 Platinum (non-SLI) mobo an 80 wire or 40 wire cable? How can one tell?
I think I may be having some UDMA issues with my second hard drive (120GB Barracuda 7200.7 IDE). I installed XP on my SATA drive with no other drives connected and then added this IDE drive.
The rest of my setup is in my sig.
Thanks!
Bruce

OK. I checked my device manager for the info on my IDE drive. I looked at the properties of NVIDIA nForce4 Parallel ATA Controller.
Primary Channel:
HD Model # is ST3120026A. The drive set up as Ultra DMA 5 - Ultra 100. Checked boxes are "Let BIOS select transfer mode, Enable read caching, and Enable write caching. I did a speed test from Windows and it shows Theoretical limit of 100, Burst speed of 86.3 and Sustained speed of 58.1.
Secondary Channel:
DVD: _NEC DVD_RW ND-3540A. Transfer mode is Ultra DMA2 - Ultra 33. This is using a flat ribbon cable from an older computer. The only box checked is "Let BIOS select transfer mode".
Do these both look OK or do I need to change something?
Then I looked at the properties of NVIDIA nForce4 ADMA Controller and found:
My SATA drive (my boot drive) is HD model # ST3160812AS. Transfer mode is PIO Mode. Boxes checked are "Enable read caching, Enable write caching, and Enable command queuing. There is a yellow triangle that says "Transfer mode downgraded". I can't do a speed test.
What do I need to do to operate in Serial ATA Generation 2 - 3G? This is how this drive is supposed to operate.
Thanks!
Bruce

Largest SATA drive for K8N Neo4 Platinum

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