IDE Controller Card?

Anyone using an IDE card they can recommend? I'm thinking of upgrading from my older A64 to an Intel quad core, but all of my devices are ATA. The cheap mobos for 775 only seem to have one IDE controller.
Another question I have is whether these cards are capable of doing the normal master/slave configuration for 2 devices per port, or since I guess it would have to be recognized in the BIOS as a SCSI device, whether they can only handle one per connection?
I'd also like to be able to boot from it so I can keep optical drives separate from hard drives, but it's not absolutely necessary. I'd prefer it, but it's not a deal breaker.
I was looking at one of these two:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6815124001
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6816132005
I believe they both use a Silicon Image chipset, which afaik is supported in 2.6.x. Any thoughts or other suggestions?

Okay - thanks very much. I already got a cheap one with silicone image chipset, but now I'm having trouble booting it.
With hard disks on the motherboard IDE (I'll call it IDE1) and optical drives on the card, the disk won't boot, either giving a Disk Boot Failure, or VMI hangup.
With the hard disks on the card and optical drives on IDE1, the computer will boot past grub, but then it says it can't find /dev/sda2 and dies.
I booted a Slax CD, and the drives when on the card are mounted as sdex and sdfx. But then grub will not boot no matter what I change the boot line to. I tried everything from sdax to sdfx, it just can't see the partition.
I can boot the computer if I only hook up the drives to the IDE channel and leave off the optical drives. But obviously that is not really useful and defeats the purpose for which I bought the card. :-p I also somehow had everything working at one point with disks on IDE1 and opticals on the card (except the opticals wouldn't boot, which I was trying to fix) but somehow I can't get that back. I've tried every configuration I can think of, cleared the CMOS, reset everything, still it doesn't work. As soon as I plug in the optical drives to the card, it just hangs at that VMI error.
Any advice before I give up on this motherboard and try a better one?
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
N/M - I got it. I just had to boot the fallback image and then rebuild the kernel. Now I have the drive on the card booting fine, and it also boots from optical.
Last edited by userlander (2009-01-24 19:01:23)

Similar Messages

KEC 7002 IDE Controller card

Yes i have windows 7 with a DC7800 CMT and i put in a IDE controller card The IDE Controller card..i put it in my PCI slot and hooked up the ide card to the card and my hard drive and put the 4 pin power cord into the hard drive..i know the hard drive is getting power but it is not showing up in the hard drive secotion of my computer..i have the jumper set to slave since i have a main SATA hard drive as the main hard drive..im using the IDE as a slave for more space..anyone can help that would be great! Thanks

Why IDE hard drive would be my first question, but your needs might outweigh me asking. There is no Master with SATA. A single EIDE/IDE drive is a Master on the cabling. Here is a link to the proper master/slave issue and the location of such drives on the cabling.
I am a volunteer. I am not an HP employee.
To say THANK YOU, press the "thumbs up symbol" to render a KUDO. Please click Accept as Solution, if your problem is solved. You can render both Solution and KUDO.
The Law of Effect states that positive reinforcement increases the probability of a behavior being repeated. (B.F.Skinner). You toss me KUDO and/or Solution, and I perform better.
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K9vgm-v problem with pci ide controller card

My problem is with a promise ultra100 tx2 pci ide controller card that I got with a western digital hard drive a year or 2 back. I can plug the card in with no hard drives attached to it, boot into windows, update the drivers, etc. but when I plug either of my hard drives into the card, it goes to a black screen directly after the screen the promise controller brings up after the main msi bios screen.
It's my understanding that this problem is caused because the ide controller card can't inject its bios into the option rom of the motherboard. I've tried disabling as many other features that I can in the bios to clear up some space in the option rom, but so far no luck. I made sure I have the latest MSI bios, but I am 1 or 2 revisions behind on the promise controller card bios, because I don't have a floppy drive and I can't get any bootable cds to work.
If need be, I can get a new ide controller card, but I would rather not, because this one works just fine, and I am pretty short on cash. I am also worried that this same problem will happen with other controller cards that I pick up. Any advice on how to get this thing working?
P.S. - is there any way to get this board to boot from a USB key? My only options in the bios for booting to USB are USB-FDD, USB-ZIP, and USB-CDROM.
-MSI k9vgm-v
-phoenix rev 1.2 (I think. Can't remember. Whatever liveupdate says is the newest)
-AMD Athlon 64 3200+
-512 MB Wintec Ampo memory
-onboard video
-Enermax 370watt noisetaker
3.3v 30A
5v 32A
12v 1 14A
12v 2 13A
-ide hard drive as primary master (windows drive)
DVD-RW as primary slave
ide hard drive as secondary master (raid drive 1)
ide hard drive on ide controller card primary master (raid drive 2)
ide hard drive on ide controller card secondary master (raid drive 3)
-Windows XP Pro SP2

"My problem is with a promise ultra100 tx2 pci ide controller card that I got with a western digital hard drive a year or 2 back. I can plug the card in with no hard drives attached to it, boot into windows, update the drivers, etc. but when I plug either of my hard drives into the card, it goes to a black screen directly after the screen the promise controller brings up after the main msi bios screen."
That means reboot cycle?
Have you tried with more powerfull PSU?
"P.S. - is there any way to get this board to boot from a USB key? My only options in the bios for booting to USB are USB-FDD, USB-ZIP, and USB-CDROM."
USB-FDD, USB-ZIP or in HDD area.. depend how will be detected your USB key.
"It's my understanding that this problem is caused because the ide controller card can't inject its bios into the option rom of the motherboard. I've tried disabling as many other features that I can in the bios to clear up some space in the option rom, but so far no luck. I made sure I have the latest MSI bios, but I am 1 or 2 revisions behind on the promise controller card bios, because I don't have a floppy drive and I can't get any bootable cds to work."
Could be...
"If need be, I can get a new ide controller card, but I would rather not, because this one works just fine, and I am pretty short on cash. I am also worried that this same problem will happen with other controller cards that I pick up. Any advice on how to get this thing working?"
"-phoenix rev 1.2 (I think. Can't remember. Whatever liveupdate says is the newest)"
Check the exact version. Latest version is 1.6, if there is an conflict that raid card unable to register property like(No enough Space to copy PCI Option ROM or similar) a new bios can help.

MOVED: 6945PL Neo - IDE Controller Card troubles

This topic has been moved to Intel P4 & Celeron P4 based board.
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=100952.0

C2D?
Let's see...
MSI 945PL Neo
(NOT Neo2)
Intel Pentium D 940 3.2GHz
Corsair Value S. PC4200 DDR2 2048MB
(2x1024)
Sapphire Radeon X1900XT 512MB GDDR3
PCI-Express,ViVo,Dual-DVI-I,Full-Retail
Western Digital Caviar 160GB
IDE ATA/100 8MB cache 7200RPM
Western Digital Caviar 160GB S-ATA
8MB cache 7200RPM
Western Digital Caviar 200GB S-ATA
8MB cache 7200RPM
The controller card is a "no name" one. Though traceable as Titan with a Winbond chip, I'll get more info on that as well later. It's an Ultra ATA - 133 PCI Controller, and it seems to be working since the drivers installed correctly and the device is showing correctly.
For the PSU I will have to get back to you, don't have time to check that right now.

IDE Controller Compatibility

Sorry for having to post. I've been searching Google for the answer but haven't found anything promising yet.
I have an old 400MHz "Yikes!" Power Macintosh G4 (PCI Graphics) being used as a small internet server, which suffers from this limit: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86178
If I buy a new PCI IDE controller card, must it somehow be "OS X compatible", or will any such card work to get me around this limitation? I can find really cheap cards on the Internet, but they only mention compatibility with things such as Windows and DOS.
Since PCI and IDE are such standardized items I'm hoping I can simply purchase any card and have it work in the G4.

Adapter update!! I got a SeriTek/1SC1 adapter IDE/ATA to serial it causes kernal panic! I kept having a problem with startup and had to reset everytime, after many posts and switching drives I have narrowed it to the adapter. i even bought a new one and the same thing happened. Just thought I would save someone a few dollars. If you have to read a larger drive and it is IDE/ATA go with the correct card. The serial drive works great!

IDE controller help!!!!!!

Hi folks,
Can anyone point me in the direction of a SIS PCI IDE controller fro my 745 ultra MOBO?
Thanks
Quade

I know of no discrete PCI IDE Controller IC made by SIS for add-in PCI cards.
A few major names in IDE Controller cards are Highpoint, Promise Technology, and SIIG.

PCI IDE Sil680(a) Controller Cards.

I have a Sun Blade 100. I want to add faster/larger capacity disks. After a little research and a man page (man uata), I determined sil680(a) based controller cards will work. The HCL has not been much help.
Which cards has anyone got to work?

I have a Sun Blade 100. I want to add faster/larger capacity disks.
Unfortunately even with Sil680A based cards the capacity is still limited to 137GB.
Martin_Rosenau did investigate on the issue (LBA48 for SPARC and Sil680A). He mentioned in another forum that Solaris 10 SPARC support for the Sil680A was added with patch 120197-01. The capacity is limited by the driver. On comp.unix.solaris Casper Dik (the author of the Solaris 2.x FAQ) confirmed that Solaris 10 x86 supports LBA48, while SPARC doesn't. Maybe the uata driver has been updated/enhanced in the meantime (the information is from January 2006).
The HCL has not been much help.
That's true, because it doesn't apply to SPARC, only to x86/x64.
Merry Christmas !
Michael

IDE Controller broken?

Hey folks,
I've posted before and had received very good advice, so I'd like to pick your brains one more time.
I recently purchased a semi-working MDD 2003 model (I'm fairly sure.) with all stock parts and two third party ram sticks.
The seller explained the problem in the e-mail he sent me:
"The machine was working perfectly up until a few days ago after I had installed a 2nd hard drive for the purposes of recovering it's contents, and then removed that drive.
The initial problem started with a kernel panic, and then ended up in the machine not being able to complete a boot (starts up ok but ends always in the Prohibit/Stop sign). I cannot boot from either the HD or the CD-Rom - I can however, boot the drive in Target Disk mode, and verified the HD is in good working order via Disk Warrior and Disk Utility.
At this point, the HD is blown clean to attempt a force start from the system folder on the CD-Rom, but no luck.
Apple thinks it is possibly a faulty IDE controller, or something that got reset incorrectly in terms of the bus chain."
Now I'm pretty sure that I can bypass the logicboard IDE's with a PCI controller and just run the system like that, but that's only if it is faulty IDE controllers. If it's got something to do with the bus chain, well then I'm lost. Regardless, I attempted to start the system using an old hard drive of mine that already has OSX.
The HD was placed in the rear sled first as a master drive, ribbon cable was double checked then system booted up. Well the grey screen and apple appear, along with the spinning cart wheel and this goes on for several minutes. Then the apple is replaced by the white circle with a bar through it, the "prohibit sign". So I then switched ribbons with the one in front, and got the same thing. This process was then done over using the front HD sled, still to no avail. I guess I could possibly avoid all of this by buying a PCI controller or just replacing the logicboard, but I'm trying to avoid those two options right now if possible.
Has anyone ever seen anything like this? Can this even be resolved? I know there are posts about bad IDE controllers, but they really didn't help much. I did a search and ended up getting quotes from the same three or four posts, so I'm pretty much up for anything as this is getting beyond me.
-J
g4 mdd dual 1.25ghz 256k 1mb L3 ?, 80gb seagate, 1286ram, ati radeon 9000
Mac OS X (10.4)

Actually I didn't use the HD that came with the
computer, I replaced it with one of my own, which has
OSX installed.
Ah....that actually may be the source of the problem, depending on what machine your drive came from.
Sometimes you can get away with it, as I did when I moved drives from a single 867 to a dual 1.42.
But...
It is possible your machines are too different, and the lower level things required to startup the system do not exist on the installation on your drive.
At this point I think that getting a pci controller
card to see if it works is easiest.
If my preceeding statement is true, then it is likely that will not work, either.
Thank you though.
Your welcome

SATA11 is it compatable with all controller cards

I want to add 500gb HD's to my G4 Giga and know I need a SATA controller card, I am considering this one card pic is this card compatable with SATA11 hard drives?
Powermac G4 Giga-ethernet Dual 1.2ghz 100bus 2 Gig Ram 2xHD 80gb+120gb USB1+2/FW Mac OS X (10.4.9) wireless network

Thanks Japamac, can I go through this deadhead style...
You can install as many OS's as you want. When you
set your Startup Disk Preferences, you are able to
select the OS that you want, as well as the disk that
you want.
Does this mean I have to make a partion thing on the same disk for each (even the same) OS?
Do I use the original install disks to do this?
Another way to select startup disk/OS, is to boot
while holding the Option key. This will open the
Startup Manager, and allow you to select which and
where you want to boot from.
This is the screen I remember from my Apple Care Plan Help Desk days
It is a good idea to have a second (and third)
bootable disk in your system.
Is the third disk on a partion thing ( I have researched this and have found, using "disk utility" I can make "partitions", if I understand correctly, my machine will "see" a partition as a separate disk, am I miles off?
That way, heaven
forbid, should one disk have trouble booting, you can
use the Startup Manager to select an alternate disk,
and then diagnose and repair the ailing disk from
there.
Do I use "disk utility" from another partition disk to do this?
This is, actually, a very important thing to
have in your system. by all means, install the OS on
the other disk.
A partition on the 120gb, how big should the partition be?
Remember, to keep both disks backed up. So, don't
give up on your external drives all together. They
are VERY useful.
This is where you are going to hate me... I dont have any externals or back ups.... this is why I am trying to work out what to do... I back up my photo's to DVD when I have enough, its not good practice because it can take a months worth before I have time to physically go through all the work to decide what I will archive to DVD, I would love for all of the work to automatically copy itself to a safe place.
While we are on the subject, a very good way to
backup, is to use Super Duper. This is a clone
utility. SD will copy bit for bit, your drive, and
then make that backup bootable. This is a very nice
feature. Also, after that, you can use the Smart
Update feature, which updates any changes of a volume
to it's clone. This way, you always have an exact
copy of your system and data. Invaluable!
This is obviously what I need... I will download it and try to understand its functions
I like OWC, myself. Even with shipping and tariffs to
Japan, it is most often cheaper to do so. Also, the
company is very reputable, has great service (try
their live chat) and stands behind what they sell.
OWC also has lots of install tutorial video (and
PDF's) in their support section. Check it
out.
I have trusted OWC since you recommended them for my processor upgrade and have just ordered the SATA controller from them and am going to get a 500gb internal HD for now until I can learn to rationalise my disk space... at the moment my files are just copies of themselves on the same disk (120gb)
Hey Japamac... I have to say thank you to you sir, you have obviously put a lot of time and effort into your reply and I really do appreciate it...
As Arnie says.... "I will be back"
G4AGP(450)Sawtooth,
2ghz PowerLogix, 2gbRAM, RaptorSATAATA, ATI Radeon
9800 Mac OS X (10.4.8) Pioneer DVR-109, 23" ACD,
Ratoc USB 2.0, QCam Ultra, Nikon Coolscan
Powermac G4 Giga-ethernet Dual 1.2ghz 100bus 2 Gig Ram 2xHD 80gb+120gb USB1+2/FW Mac OS X (10.4.9) wireless network
Powermac G4 Giga-ethernet Dual 1.2ghz 100bus 2 Gig Ram 2xHD 80gb+120gb USB1+2/FW Mac OS X (10.4.9) wireless network

975X and a PCI Controller Card

I am trying to install another SATA controller card to I can flash my firmware on my 360. But for what ever reason this board (975X) isn't allowing me to ever boot to the PCI card.
Any ideas on what settings I need to pick to do it?
Thanks!

I think I have tried that and nothing worked. The card is seen in Windows but just not while booting. I'll try it again here once my computer is done doing some things to where I can reboot. I wanted to make sure I was doing it right and it sounds like I am.

Additional PCI IDE controller does not work

I have an on-board IDE controller but I have several disks. So I bought an additional PCI IDE controller. However, Solaris 10 does not recognize it and doesn't see any disks on it. (reports "driver not attached "for the device).
Is there a way to make the external PCI controller work?

Hi, I'm having a similar problem and hope there is a solution. In my case, I bought one of the "reported to work" IDE controllers - the adaptec ASH-1233.
The board is not being recognized by Solaris. Running Nevada build 27a.
I followed the directions that Juergen Keil posted, and the directions on bigadmin associated with the card. That includes adding a line to devicedb/master:
pci1095,680 pci-ide msd pci ata.bef "Silicon Image 680 PATA Controller"
Then touching /reconfigure and doing a reboot.
The device is not found and reported in /var/adm/messages. It is shown by prtconv -pv though, with the matching identifier (pci1095,680).
So the device exists but isn't found by Solaris Nevada b27a. Thanks for any advice...
--Peter

Serial ATA Controller Card for bigger hard drives on 8600/300

Hi again,
Can a Serial ATA Controller Card work on the PowerMac 8600/300 as well as on the G4 tower?
How can I tell if the PCI slots are the same?
Thanks
web dude

According to the specs listed for Sonnet's Tempo Serial ATA controller card, it's compatible with the early PCI Macs - like the 8600, as well as newer G3s, G4s, etc. The FirmTek SeriTek 1S2 SATA controller card has gotten favorable feedback in the Forums. The 8600's PCI slots are probably PCI 2.0-compliant, whereas the G4 AGPs probably have PCI 2.1-compliant slots. Even though the FirmTek card specifies PCI 2.2-compliant slots, it's undoubtedly backward-compatible. If you just want to use larger IDE/EIDE drives in your 8600, the (now-discontinued) Acard Ultra ATA-66 PCI controller card is an inexpensive solution at $25. Unlike the Acard Ultra ATA-133 controller card, it has the 128 GB limit, so a 120 GB drive is the optimal choice for it. Newegg has a Seagate 120 GB ATA-100 (8 MB Cache) hard drive for $55. I've got (3) 8600/300s and they were one of Apple's better-designed towers, especially with the large cooling fan in the side panel. I installed a G3/266 MHz processor in one, along with a pair of 4 GB hard drives, an ATI Rage 128 graphics card, and FireWire and USB PCI cards. It runs so well and quietly, that I'm reluctant to part with it - in spite of the fact that I rarely use it anymore. With the hard drive mounting plate on the bottom of the chassis floor, it can accommodate more hard drives than the shortened version of the same mini-tower case, used for the beige G3s.

Mega 865 with a ATA Controller card

I have a Mega 865 with a P4 3.0 GHz, 1GB RAM and a Seagate HD running on Windows XP sp2.
My server crashed so I put the Promise ULTRA 100 TX2 Controller card in the PCI slot after I removed the cover of the Mega. I have 3 disks that get the power from an external power supply connected to the Controller card. When I start the Mega 865 and open Windows Explorer, I only see Total Size 5 MB on each of the 4 partitions that are on the 2 harddisks connected to the IDE 2. When I check through the Control Panel, Computer Management, Disk Management I can see the entire disks. I can enter each folder on these disks, but the PROBLEM is that I can not put any more data there. I get the message "There is not enough free disk space".
Because this controller card works in other computers and so does the disks I think that there is a problem with the Mega 865's motherboard and/or it's BIOS.
Is there anyone who have seen or heard about something like this before ?
Or are intelligent enough to solve my problem.
I don't have the money at the moment to buy a new server
a picture: http://www.pbase.com/obibobi/image/35413700/original
Edited to be more clear: the 3 extra disks are connected to a EXTERNAL power supply.

I would say further obibobi's actions probably depend on whether the data on HDD-s needs to be preserved or not.
Since I have never heard of "write protect" function in RAID controllers, the described situation seems like a h/w problem to me. having said that, I must admit though that I have never dealt with Promise stuff so far, not to mention ATA RAID controllers.. :(
In case if existing data on disks may be lost, best way forward seems to flush the entire configuration of the Promise controller and to try to re-configure it. Along with that, it may be useful to reduce the existing power consumption of Mega PC as much as possible (e.g. removal of AGP card, clocking down the CPU).
It is not entirely impossible that PSU of Mega can't handle the Promise card...
If existing data on HDD-s must be preserved at all cost, I would try to find a better host system for this disk array...

Boot from Raid-hdd with a controller card installed?

Hi,
I have a problem. I've just intalled a Windows 2000 my HDD3 (IDE-raid) and everthing went well. I've put the 1st boot option to SCSI and it boots normal. But when I add a hdd to my controller card (Promise Ultra100) it doesn't boot the raid, instead, it tries to boot from the hdd on the controller-card. I've just got this card, and had a KT3-Ultra ARU before. There I could change between "Ultra-0, Ultra-1, Raid-0 and Raid-1 etc. etc." in the bios, where Ultra stands is the Controller card and Raid in the onboard raid. So, why can't I do this on this, newer card? Any1 know how to work around it or how to fix it?
This is what I have:
IDE1:
Master: Western 180GB
Slaev: Maxtor 250GB
IDE2:
Master: NEC 1300A
Slave: Lite-on-it 40125W
IDE3 (Raid):
Master: Maxtor 80GB
Slave: Maxtor 80GB
Controller card IDE4:
Master: Western 250GB
Slave: Western 250GB
Controller card IDE5:
Master: Western 200GB
Slave: Seagate 30Gb
Controller card = Promise Ultra100
And yes, I have the modded version of the bios couse I wanted to have a real raid on my IDE-drives. How can it even be raid if it's only one drive? But that doesn't really matter, couse the boot-options are the same as before.

Hi, I did as u said and bought a new controller card (Titan Electronics Inc. Ultra ATA/133 IDE). But it didn't help, it's the same as with the older Promise card.
This is what happenes:
When I add a hdd to the controller card it finds the hdd and such. Everything works normal untill the os-boot-process begins. Because there is only one alternative called "SCSI" in the bios, where u chose where to boot from it thinks it should boot from the controller card (cause it is a kind of SCSI-card). But I want it to boot from the raided-drivers on the onboard raid (whitch also is a kind of SCSI-card). The thing is that it mixes them up, and only tries to boot from the controller card i've installed, and ignores the raided-drivers. When I had my Kt3 Ultra-aru I could chose between booting from:
IDE0
IDE1
IDE2
IDE3
CDRom
Raid0
Raid1
(this options only showed up when I had my Promise ULTRA controller installed on it)
ULTRA0
ULTRA1
ULTRA2
ULTRA3
But with this, newer and more expensive card, I can only chose SCSI in the boot sequnce.
Any idea how to fix that? Maybe to mail to the MSI so they fast can added that choice to the BIOS in an update?
Would be thankfull for any help possible

KT6V LSR (MS 7021) SATA controller card second opinion, please

I want to thank Fredrik Asenius for his reply to my previous post.
However, due to the fact that the purchase of a SATA controller card and two SATA2 hard disks will be handled, of necessity, at a distance of 800 kilometers (involving courier expenses), the technician of the store has requested that I ask for a second opinion from another expert in the forum. An error, therefore, could be very costly. (No offense of any kind intended to Fredrik Asenius)
My motherboard is the MSI KT6V LSR (MS 7021) Via KT600 Northbridge and Via 8237 Southbridge chipsets.
Both SATA connections are currently taken up by two SATA hard drives (no striping, nor mirroring in use). The rest of the installation consists of IDE CDRW and DVDRW drives, as well as an MSI Nvidia NX6200AX (256 RAM) AGP video card and a Soundblaster Live Value PCI audio card. The other four PCI slots are not occupied. The system also has 1.5 gigabytes of RAM and a 520-watt PSU. I am running Windows XP SP2 Professional.
My questions are the following:
(1) Since the two SATA connectors on my motherboard are occupied, if I wish to add another SATA device I will have to install a SATA controller card. Does the SATA controller card have to be SATA 1 or can I also use a SATA 2 controller card?
IMPORTANTLY, the technician questions whether the motherboard will accept a controller card adding more SATA devices. He says that you cannot add any more SATA devices to this motherboard. Is he correct?
(2) If it is possible to add more SATA devices using a controller card, since the chipset on the motherboard is Via the SATA controller software is also from Via. Does the SATA controller card also have to be one that uses the Via SATA RAID software? (In other words, are there compatibility issues? Can all this all work together?)
Once again, thanks for the help.

Quote from: bjmcm on 14-December-06, 04:40:05
(1) Since the two SATA connectors on my motherboard are occupied, if I wish to add another SATA device I will have to install a SATA controller card. Does the SATA controller card have to be SATA 1 or can I also use a SATA 2 controller card?
IMPORTANTLY, the technician questions whether the motherboard will accept a controller card adding more SATA devices. He says that you cannot add any more SATA devices to this motherboard. Is he correct?
(2) If it is possible to add more SATA devices using a controller card, since the chipset on the motherboard is Via the SATA controller software is also from Via. Does the SATA controller card also have to be one that uses the Via SATA RAID software? (In other words, are there compatibility issues? Can all this all work together?)
Once again, thanks for the help.
I have had a fair amount of experience with this kind of issue.
1. No, the add in card does not need to be SATA I, it can be SATA II. I recommend a SATA II card and SATA II drives. Putting SATA II drives on a SATA I controller can fail to work.
2. Is he wrong? Essentially, yes he is wrong. It depends on how literally you take his words. You can NOT add more SATA drives to the motherboard. You CAN add an add-in SATA card and then put the additional SATA drives on that new add-in card. The difference in wording the answer is critical.
You ask about the Via chipset on the motherboard and also on the add-in card. Actually, it is probably LESS likely that the add-in card will work if the chipsets are the same. The issue is the computer being able to differentiate between the two controllers. I had this very problem with a machine.
That computer had two add-in cards. Each was the same brand. The computer could not differentiate between the two cards and gave a hardware error. I replaced one of the cards with another brand and it works fine. The manufacturer suggested trying the cards in different PCI slots. I did not try that, I just got a new card because it was easier for me.
The add-in card does NOT need to support RAID, that is optional. If you do not want to use RAID, the card does not have to support it. If you do want to use RAID, obviously the card does need to support it. RAID is part hardware and part software so if the card supports it and you do not to set it up as RAID, that is fine.
One caution...If the add-in card has an external port that you want to use, be aware that there is something called e-SATA that might use an incompatable type of port connecter. I had a card with that connecter and I found that the cables are extremely expensive and also hard to find. Most external SATA connectors are the SATA I style that you are used to though.

IDE Controller Card?

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