Old Thrashbarg wrote:

A lot of the newer drives have a firmware option for changing the interface speed, which can be set using the drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility.

However, some of the early SATA chips had issues with any drive over 1TB. I don't know if that's the case with the Via controller or not, but I know the Silicon Image controllers were especially bad about it.

All the first gen PCI SATA chipsets are wonky. Heck, the Silicon Image Si311x ones were wonky with first gen drives! As for the VIA not seeing large drives, they are likely 4k sector "Advanced Format". I know the VT6421 can't handle them at all, I wouldn't be surprised if the VT8237 south bridge has the same problem. Quite ironically, these SATA drives work perfectly fine on PATA channels with a bridge adapter!

So far the "best" early SATA chipset I have found for compatibility in PCI systems is Intel's ICH5 implementation on i865 boards. There are also a couple of new Silicon Image 3124 native SATA2 PCI cards out, but I have yet to try them.