I have already tried reducing my system memory to 2048 by physically pulling two of my memory modules (4x1Gb).

I'll give maxmem a go again, just to see what happens.

Cheers,

Jon.

OK, so some more info...

I thought I would install OSX via the eSATA AHCI JMicron controller instead.

Therefore eliminating the onboard ICH9R AHCI.

I could not get the thing to install... the installer saw the disk - and would let me partition it etc... but the install process was just taking forever.. every now and again a small blip of data would be written to the hdd.

Booting in to OSX with the ICH9R set to IDE (boot disk) and the JMicron eSATA set to AHCI (spare disk) I can confirm that this is definately hdd related and not a system hang.

i.e. Copying to the IDE is fine, copying to the AHCI stalls.

However, because the AHCI is not my system disk, I can continue to use the operating system - in this instance only the copy process hangs.

So so so odd...

I'm gonna partition one of my other drives now...

Also, maxmem=2048 made no difference.

Cheers,

Jon.

Partitioned my 1TB WDC Storage HDD....

Guess what....

....

It works!!


So, for some reason 2 of my 80GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA2 HDD's don't work with AHCI.

They work perfectly in Windows (RAID - but as non-raid devices), and work fine in IDE mode for OSX86.

I've not tested them in ACHI mode for Windows... Maybe I will install Windows 7 on one of them - but I suspect they will work just fine, then again I don't know till I try - so sick of installing OS's :S !!

Can some one offer an explanation for this!!?

Cheers,

Jon.