# SATA Drive and HDD LED problem



## PDonahoe (Feb 4, 2005)

Hi everyone, I'm new to this forum!

I just bought an ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe motherboard with an ANTEC P-160 case. Installed one WD SATA Hard Drive. Everything is working fine, except:

The HDD LED light will not come on when the HD is active. Yes, I've tried revesing the polarity, no luck. I notice that the manual lists the connection on the board as "IDE-LED". Hmmn, IDE not SATA.

I've checked the ASUS Knowledge Base, and here is what I found:

"Q: Why doesn't IDE LED light up when accessing SATA HDD ?
A: Due to hardware chip limitation, IDE LED does not active when using SATA HDD." (Ref: http://www.asus.com/support/faq/qanda.aspx?KB_ID=100090030&SLanguage=en-us)

Is this true? If so, is there any 'fix' or workaround for this? I really like to monitor the HD during a long process to be sure it's finished before I move on to another task.

There was another thread in this forum talking about this problem, but I could not post there because the thread had expired.


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## ksteiger (Oct 3, 2004)

I'm running 3 SATA drives on an ASUS P4C800E Deluxe mobo and the light always flickers when the drives are accessed. Maybe the problem is particular to your motherboard model.


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## PDonahoe (Feb 4, 2005)

I just talked to tech support at ASUS, and this was their reply regarding this SATA LED problem. "It isn't supposed to work that way -- i.e., it's not wired for the HDD-LED light to show SATA activity -- on any of their motherboards." I explained that I had visited this forum and someone said they had 3 SATA's and the light worked, the tech support guy says he has heard of this sometimes happening, but it's not supposed to. When I asked him if there was any workaround for this, he said there was none he knew of.

Is this report consistent with all of you ASUS mobo owners who have SATA drives installed?


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## ksteiger (Oct 3, 2004)

I found this response to someone's query regarding SATA drives and the HDD LED. Interesting...maybe I just got lucky and my hardware meets the criteria required to light the LED -- although I, too, would like to hear from other ASUS board owners.

_Just an FYI... historically, the LED has been driven in PATA with a
signal known as /DASP, this is an active-low signal called "Drive
Active / Slave Present" and a PATA drive asserts this signal when
processing a command.

If I understand it right, in SATA, instead of a wire-based protocol,
we have a serialized packet-based protocol, so there was no driving of
an LED in the initial specification. Revisions to the specification
have since commandeered one of the pins on the power connector for use
as a /DASP signal to drive an LED. However, to do that you obviously
can't be using a MOLEX->SATA power adapter, you need a motherboard
that natively supports SATA. The 3112 you mention attempts to be a
native SATA solution, it doesn't act merely as a PATA->SATA converter.
Therefore, they may not have done the DASP- signal internally.

Another option would be one of the new 4+ port SATA RAID adapters that
has LEDs on the adapter board itself._


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## charliep1 (Jun 30, 2004)

FYI. I have a Asus A7N8X Deluxe with SATA and HD LED works. Have you checked for any BIOS related updates?
Charlie


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## PDonahoe (Feb 4, 2005)

I found this on another forum:

"If your SATA's are connected to the VIA VT8237 (SouthBridge) the hard drive activity light is unsupported and 99% of the time the "lights" will not work. However, if you have SATA's connected to the Promise-378 Controller than the hard drive activity lights will work. "

Does this explain why some of you can get your SATA-HD LEDs to function, and I can't?


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## ksteiger (Oct 3, 2004)

Maybe so. Two of my drives are connected to the Intel ICH5R controller and one is connected to the Promise controller.


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