This thread is definitely interesting. But overall how are we going to know what's really wrong? Seriously? Every single SATA problem anyone has is now going to be blamed on Intel's p67 chipset. Hard drive works on my AMD but not my P67? Gotta be the chipset. CDROM won't work on port 3 but does on port 1? Gotta be the chipset. Smart errors? Gotta be the chipset. Nobody is going to try to defend an arguement that the drive isn't compatible, that the drivers are flawed, etc. Anyone who tries to make that arguement is going to be quickly squashed by the sudden onslaught of techies who are absolutely certain that p67s are unreliable. Now every reason for any device not working on a P67 is always going to be blamed on the same thing.... it's gotta be the chipset. Everyone is going to turn around and claim Intel has drastically underestimated the 5-15% failure rate over 3 years.
I'd heard through the grapevine that part of the reason Intel chose to go ahead with it's current plan of action was that Intel was anticipating that all SATA problems on P67s would be blamed on the chipset problem. Intel didn't want to have to deal with going to court and trying to prove a case when it would be next to impossible to prove their case. Imagine if Intel tested your failed p67 board and told you that your messed up P67 motherboard wasn't bad because of Intel's defect but because of something else. Who would really believe it when everyone already has the pre-conceived notion that their problem absolutely must be related to the chipset flaw and nothing else.
Based on some of the technical info I've read, I'd say the easiest way to determine if it REALLY is the chipset is to switch to another port that is still SATA 3Gbps. If all drives fail to be detected on, say, port 3, but work on port 4, then I might buy it. We're talking about a single transistor that is unique to each port. So one single port might fail, but the other ports would be unaffected unless they have been "used" about the same. (
read here for the reason why I think a single port would fail but not all simultaneously) I think the only people that could confirm or deny this would be Intel employees that are "in the know".
Regardless, its funny how alot of people have bad SATA ports, but nobody was claiming they had a bunch of failed SATA ports here BEFORE Intel made the announcement. Now there's threads all over the place on many forums of people claiming to have a defective board.
Honestly, it's very disappointing that so many people think they have the answer to their problems. Look at all of the problems people have with RAID controllers and hard drives these days. Despite all the problems blamed on hard drive firmware, drivers, compatibility issues, few people have the actual answers. The companies aren't about to tell us the truth either, which only adds to the speculation and adds fuel to the fire of the conspiracy theorists. The rest of us just listen to everyone else and accept that you don't mix certain brand hard drives with certain brainds of RAID controllers.
Bookmarks