GA-EP45-UD3P rev1.6 for 3TB drives

[lownotes]

Just to follow up, I upgraded my bios with this fix and now my bios sees the drive as 2.7tb, however, I haven't had any luck with Win 7 64 bit. In drive manager it only shows up as 748Mb still.

[gto4ben]

Just to follow up, I upgraded my bios with this fix and now my bios sees the drive as 2.7tb, however, I haven't had any luck with Win 7 64 bit. In drive manager it only shows up as 748Mb still.

to lownotes:
It's possible there was an existing partition already set up on your 3TB hard drive and you simply installed the OS using the native Win7 intel driver. To increase your HD space, you may want to use a tool to resize your partition. I like EASUS Partition Master or Paragon Partition Manager to perform this. There are others including Win 7's native Disk Management. (right then left click "computer-manage-disk management"). You will see unallocated space that can be combined with your primary partition (up to 2047.9GB on your boot drive for non EFI bios) and can then set up a second separate GPT partition for the remaining space.
In my system using two 3TB drives, I set up in the intel RAID bios a 2047.9GB RAID0 volume for my primary volume and the remainder as another RAID0 volume. Win7 x86 or x64 should use the full amount of the first volume. Once set up, you can use the Win 7 disk management or other tools to set up the huge partitions.
It is important to use a compatible RAID driver from intel when doing a fresh install or if you upgrade after the bios is set up. Win7 will ask you if you want to install drivers during a fresh or upgrade installation. Copy the current f6flpy-x64.zip version from intel's download center and you will see that this driver will recognize more than 748GB and you can set it up to use the full 2047.9GB and the remainder after the OS is installed. Once the OS is installed, you can obtain an Intel Rapid Storage Technology 11.6.2.1002 (or other version) driver from station-drivers.com under their drivers-chipsets-intel web page or what's available from intel's download center.

to bigi:
Using the specs on the Gigabyte web site, it appears your MB and mine share some common parts which should use the same ROMs
ICH10R southbridge
8111C ethernet
SATA2 chip.
Im surprised you were not able to locate a modded bios with the latest OROMs. Nevertheless, I downloaded the F12 bios for the GA-EP45-UD3R rev 1.0 and updated the above with the same ROMs mentioned earlier in the thread used for the GA-EP45-UD3P Rev 1.6 . I don't have a GA-EP45-UD3R rev 1.0 MB to test the attached bios so use at your own risk which means to know how to perform BIOS recovery on the Gigabyte MB just in case. The GA-EP45-UD3R rev 1.0 has Dual Bios so it should be recoverable.
If you are interested in modding the bios yourself, you'll need a 32bit windows OS (or Windows XP Mode in a Win7 x64 OS), CBROM 1.98 found in the "Modification Downloads" on this web site, and know a little DOS since CBROM ican be used in the DOS box within a x86 OS.

[bigi]

Just to follow up, I upgraded my bios with this fix and now my bios sees the drive as 2.7tb, however, I haven't had any luck with Win 7 64 bit. In drive manager it only shows up as 748Mb still.

to lownotes:
It's possible there was an existing partition already set up on your 3TB hard drive and you simply installed the OS using the native Win7 intel driver. To increase your HD space, you may want to use a tool to resize your partition. I like EASUS Partition Master or Paragon Partition Manager to perform this. There are others including Win 7's native Disk Management. (right then left click "computer-manage-disk management"). You will see unallocated space that can be combined with your primary partition (up to 2047.9GB on your boot drive for non EFI bios) and can then set up a second separate GPT partition for the remaining space.
In my system using two 3TB drives, I set up in the intel RAID bios a 2047.9GB RAID0 volume for my primary volume and the remainder as another RAID0 volume. Win7 x86 or x64 should use the full amount of the first volume. Once set up, you can use the Win 7 disk management or other tools to set up the huge partitions.
It is important to use a compatible RAID driver from intel when doing a fresh install or if you upgrade after the bios is set up. Win7 will ask you if you want to install drivers during a fresh or upgrade installation. Copy the current f6flpy-x64.zip version from intel's download center and you will see that this driver will recognize more than 748GB and you can set it up to use the full 2047.9GB and the remainder after the OS is installed. Once the OS is installed, you can obtain an Intel Rapid Storage Technology 11.6.2.1002 (or other version) driver from station-drivers.com under their drivers-chipsets-intel web page or what's available from intel's download center.

to bigi:
Using the specs on the Gigabyte web site, it appears your MB and mine share some common parts which should use the same ROMs
ICH10R southbridge
8111C ethernet
SATA2 chip.
Im surprised you were not able to locate a modded bios with the latest OROMs. Nevertheless, I downloaded the F12 bios for the GA-EP45-UD3R rev 1.0 and updated the above with the same ROMs mentioned earlier in the thread used for the GA-EP45-UD3P Rev 1.6 . I don't have a GA-EP45-UD3R rev 1.0 MB to test the attached bios so use at your own risk which means to know how to perform BIOS recovery on the Gigabyte MB just in case. The GA-EP45-UD3R rev 1.0 has Dual Bios so it should be recoverable.
If you are interested in modding the bios yourself, you'll need a 32bit windows OS (or Windows XP Mode in a Win7 x64 OS), CBROM 1.98 found in the "Modification Downloads" on this web site, and know a little DOS since CBROM ican be used in the DOS box within a x86 OS.

gto4ben thank you very much for your help with this - the ROM does indeed work great; although for some reason since i flashed it, the boot process no longer shows the Gigabyte SATA BIOS boot process; even though the 2 optical drives attached to it show up in Windows 7 x64 ok. Any ideas why this might be; does it do the same on your board? Another little glitch that is happening is i am trying to install the intel 11.7 drivers and software on the machine, and they install and update the drivers fine, but as soon as i reboot, Windows hangs and i have to go back in with last known good configuration - again is this something that you have experienced?

With regards to the modded roms - i did find some, but they were one older ROMS for the Intel RAID and the LAN rom. i do intend to have a proper play, but wanted to ensure i could get my 3TB drive working well first! the weird thing i discovered with this is that if i partition the 3TB drive first using the gigabyte or another 3TB supporting machine and put format the partitions, the pc recognises it no problem. however, if i delete the partitions the drive immediately drops to 750GB in size again! hence my attempts to install the newer boot drivers for the Intel AHCI rom....

[312BhP]

Hi folks, I came across this thread when trying to find out if my Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P (Rev 1.0) with F11d BIOS will support a 3TB HDD attached to the ICH10R SATA2_0 (Storage only, not a boot drive)?

I currently use a 2TB Samsung HD203WI on that port but am looking to upgrade it to a 3TB which I assume will be a 4K Sector model?

I am not sure as I use AHCI mode and have the drive formatted as a GUID Partition Table if I even need a modified BIOS so would welcome peoples thoughts on this question?

Many thanks...312BhP

[gto4ben]

Just to follow up, I upgraded my bios with this fix and now my bios sees the drive as 2.7tb, however, I haven't had any luck with Win 7 64 bit. In drive manager it only shows up as 748Mb still.

to lownotes:
It's possible there was an existing partition already set up on your 3TB hard drive and you simply installed the OS using the native Win7 intel driver. To increase your HD space, you may want to use a tool to resize your partition. I like EASUS Partition Master or Paragon Partition Manager to perform this. There are others including Win 7's native Disk Management. (right then left click "computer-manage-disk management"). You will see unallocated space that can be combined with your primary partition (up to 2047.9GB on your boot drive for non EFI bios) and can then set up a second separate GPT partition for the remaining space.
In my system using two 3TB drives, I set up in the intel RAID bios a 2047.9GB RAID0 volume for my primary volume and the remainder as another RAID0 volume. Win7 x86 or x64 should use the full amount of the first volume. Once set up, you can use the Win 7 disk management or other tools to set up the huge partitions.
It is important to use a compatible RAID driver from intel when doing a fresh install or if you upgrade after the bios is set up. Win7 will ask you if you want to install drivers during a fresh or upgrade installation. Copy the current f6flpy-x64.zip version from intel's download center and you will see that this driver will recognize more than 748GB and you can set it up to use the full 2047.9GB and the remainder after the OS is installed. Once the OS is installed, you can obtain an Intel Rapid Storage Technology 11.6.2.1002 (or other version) driver from station-drivers.com under their drivers-chipsets-intel web page or what's available from intel's download center.

to bigi:
Using the specs on the Gigabyte web site, it appears your MB and mine share some common parts which should use the same ROMs
ICH10R southbridge
8111C ethernet
SATA2 chip.
Im surprised you were not able to locate a modded bios with the latest OROMs. Nevertheless, I downloaded the F12 bios for the GA-EP45-UD3R rev 1.0 and updated the above with the same ROMs mentioned earlier in the thread used for the GA-EP45-UD3P Rev 1.6 . I don't have a GA-EP45-UD3R rev 1.0 MB to test the attached bios so use at your own risk which means to know how to perform BIOS recovery on the Gigabyte MB just in case. The GA-EP45-UD3R rev 1.0 has Dual Bios so it should be recoverable.
If you are interested in modding the bios yourself, you'll need a 32bit windows OS (or Windows XP Mode in a Win7 x64 OS), CBROM 1.98 found in the "Modification Downloads" on this web site, and know a little DOS since CBROM ican be used in the DOS box within a x86 OS.

gto4ben thank you very much for your help with this - the ROM does indeed work great; although for some reason since i flashed it, the boot process no longer shows the Gigabyte SATA BIOS boot process; even though the 2 optical drives attached to it show up in Windows 7 x64 ok. Any ideas why this might be; does it do the same on your board? Another little glitch that is happening is i am trying to install the intel 11.7 drivers and software on the machine, and they install and update the drivers fine, but as soon as i reboot, Windows hangs and i have to go back in with last known good configuration - again is this something that you have experienced?

With regards to the modded roms - i did find some, but they were one older ROMS for the Intel RAID and the LAN rom. i do intend to have a proper play, but wanted to ensure i could get my 3TB drive working well first! the weird thing i discovered with this is that if i partition the 3TB drive first using the gigabyte or another 3TB supporting machine and put format the partitions, the pc recognises it no problem. however, if i delete the partitions the drive immediately drops to 750GB in size again! hence my attempts to install the newer boot drivers for the Intel AHCI rom....

Yes. I confirmed your observation and it also does not show on my setup. I tried all the combos (IDE-AHCI-IDE/RAID). JMicron's web site indicated that JMB36x latest ROM is 1.07.28 which I used to update in the BIOS. I attempted Cntrl-G during boot and no GSATA menu came up. I attached a spare HD to the GSATA port and Win7 recognized this drive as it did with your optical drives. The ROM's history log on the JMicron web site indicated a size change. It may be they ran out of room and the GUI was the first to go.

I also had major problems with Intel RAID driver 11.7.1013. It required a fresh reinstall of Win7 x64 due to data corruption. I've had excellent success with 11.6.0.1030 & my current 11.6.2.1002 and will stick with this version for a while.

---

Hi folks, I came across this thread when trying to find out if my Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P (Rev 1.0) with F11d BIOS will support a 3TB HDD attached to the ICH10R SATA2_0 (Storage only, not a boot drive)?

I currently use a 2TB Samsung HD203WI on that port but am looking to upgrade it to a 3TB which I assume will be a 4K Sector model?

I am not sure as I use AHCI mode and have the drive formatted as a GUID Partition Table if I even need a modified BIOS so would welcome peoples thoughts on this question?

Many thanks...312BhP

I never thought to attach a 3TB drive to the SATA2 ports since the performance on the ICH10R is better. I'll save this experiment for a future date.

With the correct Intel Option Rom in the BIOS, you can utilize the full capacity of the 3TB drive for storage. Win7 is able to read GUID (GPT) partitions and can even boot from it if the BIOS is EFI. Unfortunately, Gigabyte will not be providing EFI bios for the GA-EP45-UD3P rev 1.0, 1.1, or 1.6. You'll know right away if the BIOS needs a new OROM if the capacity only reads ~750GB.

---

Just to follow up, I upgraded my bios with this fix and now my bios sees the drive as 2.7tb, however, I haven't had any luck with Win 7 64 bit. In drive manager it only shows up as 748Mb still.

to lownotes:
It's possible there was an existing partition already set up on your 3TB hard drive and you simply installed the OS using the native Win7 intel driver. To increase your HD space, you may want to use a tool to resize your partition. I like EASUS Partition Master or Paragon Partition Manager to perform this. There are others including Win 7's native Disk Management. (right then left click "computer-manage-disk management"). You will see unallocated space that can be combined with your primary partition (up to 2047.9GB on your boot drive for non EFI bios) and can then set up a second separate GPT partition for the remaining space.
In my system using two 3TB drives, I set up in the intel RAID bios a 2047.9GB RAID0 volume for my primary volume and the remainder as another RAID0 volume. Win7 x86 or x64 should use the full amount of the first volume. Once set up, you can use the Win 7 disk management or other tools to set up the huge partitions.
It is important to use a compatible RAID driver from intel when doing a fresh install or if you upgrade after the bios is set up. Win7 will ask you if you want to install drivers during a fresh or upgrade installation. Copy the current f6flpy-x64.zip version from intel's download center and you will see that this driver will recognize more than 748GB and you can set it up to use the full 2047.9GB and the remainder after the OS is installed. Once the OS is installed, you can obtain an Intel Rapid Storage Technology 11.6.2.1002 (or other version) driver from station-drivers.com under their drivers-chipsets-intel web page or what's available from intel's download center.

to bigi:
Using the specs on the Gigabyte web site, it appears your MB and mine share some common parts which should use the same ROMs
ICH10R southbridge
8111C ethernet
SATA2 chip.
Im surprised you were not able to locate a modded bios with the latest OROMs. Nevertheless, I downloaded the F12 bios for the GA-EP45-UD3R rev 1.0 and updated the above with the same ROMs mentioned earlier in the thread used for the GA-EP45-UD3P Rev 1.6 . I don't have a GA-EP45-UD3R rev 1.0 MB to test the attached bios so use at your own risk which means to know how to perform BIOS recovery on the Gigabyte MB just in case. The GA-EP45-UD3R rev 1.0 has Dual Bios so it should be recoverable.
If you are interested in modding the bios yourself, you'll need a 32bit windows OS (or Windows XP Mode in a Win7 x64 OS), CBROM 1.98 found in the "Modification Downloads" on this web site, and know a little DOS since CBROM ican be used in the DOS box within a x86 OS.

gto4ben thank you very much for your help with this - the ROM does indeed work great; although for some reason since i flashed it, the boot process no longer shows the Gigabyte SATA BIOS boot process; even though the 2 optical drives attached to it show up in Windows 7 x64 ok. Any ideas why this might be; does it do the same on your board? Another little glitch that is happening is i am trying to install the intel 11.7 drivers and software on the machine, and they install and update the drivers fine, but as soon as i reboot, Windows hangs and i have to go back in with last known good configuration - again is this something that you have experienced?

With regards to the modded roms - i did find some, but they were one older ROMS for the Intel RAID and the LAN rom. i do intend to have a proper play, but wanted to ensure i could get my 3TB drive working well first! the weird thing i discovered with this is that if i partition the 3TB drive first using the gigabyte or another 3TB supporting machine and put format the partitions, the pc recognises it no problem. however, if i delete the partitions the drive immediately drops to 750GB in size again! hence my attempts to install the newer boot drivers for the Intel AHCI rom....

Yes. I confirmed your observation and it also does not show on my setup. I tried all the combos (IDE-AHCI-IDE/RAID). JMicron's web site indicated that JMB36x latest ROM is 1.07.28 which I used to update in the BIOS. I attempted Cntrl-G during boot and no GSATA menu came up. I attached a spare HD to the GSATA port and Win7 recognized this drive as it did with your optical drives. The ROM's history log on the JMicron web site indicated a size change. It may be they ran out of room and the GUI was the first to go.

I also had major problems with Intel RAID driver 11.7.1013. It required a fresh reinstall of Win7 x64 due to data corruption. I've had excellent success with 11.6.0.1030 & my current 11.6.2.1002 and will stick with this version for a while.

---

Hi folks, I came across this thread when trying to find out if my Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P (Rev 1.0) with F11d BIOS will support a 3TB HDD attached to the ICH10R SATA2_0 (Storage only, not a boot drive)?

I currently use a 2TB Samsung HD203WI on that port but am looking to upgrade it to a 3TB which I assume will be a 4K Sector model?

I am not sure as I use AHCI mode and have the drive formatted as a GUID Partition Table if I even need a modified BIOS so would welcome peoples thoughts on this question?

Many thanks...312BhP

I never thought to attach a 3TB drive to the SATA2 ports since the performance on the ICH10R is better. I'll save this experiment for a future date.

With the correct Intel Option Rom in the BIOS, you can utilize the full capacity of the 3TB drive for storage. Win7 is able to read GUID (GPT) partitions and can even boot from it if the BIOS is EFI. Unfortunately, Gigabyte will not be providing EFI bios for the GA-EP45-UD3P rev 1.0, 1.1, or 1.6. You'll know right away if the BIOS needs a new OROM if the capacity only reads ~750GB.

I reread your question and realized you meant the physical SATA port and not the GSATA2. Sorry about that. The BIOS uses PCHAHCI_1.20E. My version is from 2010 and it may or may not support 3TB. I have not tried to setup this way to confirm its 3TB support but workarounds have been to run it through the Intel RAID BIOS as a straight drive where I know it will recognize the drive (as when I clicked OPTIMAL Defaults in the BIOS and forgot to enable the Intel RAID following reboot).

[312BhP]

I reread your question and realized you meant the physical SATA port and not the GSATA2. Sorry about that. The BIOS uses PCHAHCI_1.20E. My version is from 2010 and it may or may not support 3TB. I have not tried to setup this way to confirm its 3TB support but workarounds have been to run it through the Intel RAID BIOS as a straight drive where I know it will recognize the drive (as when I clicked OPTIMAL Defaults in the BIOS and forgot to enable the Intel RAID following reboot).

Thanks for the reply.

When you say your version is from 2010, is that a modified version of PCHAHCI_1.20E as mine is also 1.20E but is dated 2003-2008 in the boot screen?

Am I right in thinking the modifications are for when RAID is enabled on ICH10R and GSATA?

I am also interested to know what improvements the modifications to the 8111C LAN are?

I will put a request for a modified BIOS, hopefully someone can knock me one together with the latest modifications.

[gto4ben]

I reread your question and realized you meant the physical SATA port and not the GSATA2. Sorry about that. The BIOS uses PCHAHCI_1.20E. My version is from 2010 and it may or may not support 3TB. I have not tried to setup this way to confirm its 3TB support but workarounds have been to run it through the Intel RAID BIOS as a straight drive where I know it will recognize the drive (as when I clicked OPTIMAL Defaults in the BIOS and forgot to enable the Intel RAID following reboot).

Thanks for the reply.

When you say your version is from 2010, is that a modified version of PCHAHCI_1.20E as mine is also 1.20E but is dated 2003-2008 in the boot screen?

Am I right in thinking the modifications are for when RAID is enabled on ICH10R and GSATA?

I am also interested to know what improvements the modifications to the 8111C LAN are?

I will put a request for a modified BIOS, hopefully someone can knock me one together with the latest modifications.

I have never seen an update to PCHAHCI_1.20E. The date came from the modified date field in its file properties so it can indeed be older as you indicated.
You are correct. The intel OROM is for the ICH10R RAID and the JMicron for the GSATA2 when enabled.
Realtek does not post what changes are made to their OROM but my guess is that as they manufacture additional chip types and revisions, they simply update the code for compatibility since I have not seen a performance or stability improvement with each new version. As I was perusing their web site, I see they now have a version 2.52.
I saw your bios request so I thought I'd give it an update as long as you don't mind being at the bleeding edge with the Realtek 2.52 OROM.
I compared your GA-EP45-UD3P rev 1.0 to my rev 1.6 and it uses the same chips so updating your bios should be low risk but I do not have a GA-EP45-UD3P rev 1.0 to test it so please reread how to do a bios recovery just in case .
ICH10R southbridge - v11.6.0.1702
8111C ethernet - rtegrom252.lom
SATA2 chip - jmb362_C_1.07.28
Gigabyte SLIC

[gto4ben]

If anyone is interested, I also updated the GA-EP45-UD3P rev 1.6 with the latest Realtek 8111C ROM. No noticeable improvement in performance or stability but appears to work fine.
ICH10R southbridge - v11.6.0.1702
8111C ethernet - rtegrom252.lom
SATA2 chip - jmb362_C_1.07.28
Gigabyte SLIC

[312BhP]

Thanks gto4ben, as I don't use Windows as a main OS I don't need a Gigabyte SLIC (Or any SLIC at all) could I possibly trouble you for the same one without it?

[gto4ben]

Thanks gto4ben, as I don't use Windows as a main OS I don't need a Gigabyte SLIC (Or any SLIC at all) could I possibly trouble you for the same one without it?

No problem. Attached are just the bare essentials for yor GA-EP45-UD3P rev 1.0, f11d

ICH10R southbridge - v11.6.0.1702
8111C ethernet - rtegrom252.lom
SATA2 chip - jmb362_C_1.07.28