SATA3 drives negotiated to SATA2 on SATA3 ports

[jnitis]

Hiya Folks,

I'm running Seagate NAS drives (ST3000VN000) on an MSI E350IA-E44 motherboard both of which support SATA3 however under FreeNAS they end up negotiating to SATA2. What is the reason for this and how can I get them to be recognized at the full SATA3 speeds? The ports are set to AHCI in the BIOS and there are no jumpers on the drives.

Thanks very much!

Code:

[root@freenas] /mnt/data# uname -a
FreeBSD freenas.minifrizzle 9.2-RELEASE-p4 FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE-p4 #0 r262572+36f49d3: Fri Apr 18 04:16:22 PDT 2014    root@build.ixsystems.com:/home/jkh/9.2.1-BRANCH/freenas/os-base/amd64/tank/home/jkh/9.2.1-BRANCH/freenas/FreeBSD/src/sys/FREENAS.amd64  amd64

Code:

sample dmesg bit:
ada1 at ahcich2 bus 0 scbus2 target 0 lun 0
ada1: <ST3000VN000-1H4167 SC43> ATA-9 SATA 3.x device
ada1: Serial Number Z310234H
ada1: 300.000MB/s transfers (SATA 2.x, UDMA6, PIO 8192bytes)
ada1: Command Queueing enabled
ada1: 2861588MB (5860533168 512 byte sectors: 16H 63S/T 16383C)
ada1: Previously was known as ad8

Code:

[root@freenas] /mnt/data# dmesg | grep ahci
ahci0: <ATI IXP700 AHCI SATA controller> port 0xf190-0xf197,0xf180-0xf183,0xf170-0xf177,0xf160-0xf163,0xf150-0xf15f mem 0xfeb4b000-0xfeb4b3ff irq 19 at device 17.0 on pci0
ahci0: AHCI v1.20 with 4 6Gbps ports, Port Multiplier supported
ahcich0: <AHCI channel> at channel 0 on ahci0
ahcich1: <AHCI channel> at channel 1 on ahci0
ahcich2: <AHCI channel> at channel 2 on ahci0
ahcich3: <AHCI channel> at channel 3 on ahci0
ada0 at ahcich0 bus 0 scbus0 target 0 lun 0
ada1 at ahcich2 bus 0 scbus2 target 0 lun 0
ada2 at ahcich3 bus 0 scbus3 target 0 lun 0

Code:

[root@freenas] /mnt/data# camcontrol identify ada1
pass1: <ST3000VN000-1H4167 SC43> ATA-9 SATA 3.x device
pass1: 300.000MB/s transfers (SATA 2.x, UDMA6, PIO 8192bytes)
 
protocol              ATA/ATAPI-9 SATA 3.x
device model          ST3000VN000-1H4167
firmware revision    SC43
serial number        Z310234H
WWN                  5000c50064c586dd
cylinders            16383
heads                16
sectors/track        63
sector size          logical 512, physical 4096, offset 0
LBA supported        268435455 sectors
LBA48 supported      5860533168 sectors
PIO supported        PIO4
DMA supported        WDMA2 UDMA6
media RPM            5900

Code:

[root@freenas] /mnt/data# smartctl -a /dev/ada1
smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE-p4 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
 
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model:    ST3000VN000-1H4167
Serial Number:    Z310234H
LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 064c586dd
Firmware Version: SC43
User Capacity:    3,000,592,982,016 bytes [3.00 TB]
Sector Sizes:    512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    5900 rpm
Device is:        Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is:  ACS-2, ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 3b
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 3.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Mon Apr 21 10:30:36 2014 MYT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

 

[warri]

I'm not sure how to force it to Sata III, but I think it's not even necessary.
A single of your drives will never even fully saturate Sata II (up to 300MB/s), even Sata I (150 MB/s) would probably be fine ;)