2 sata hdd and 2 sata dvd writers

[chrispjplumbing]

Can anyone help? I have a fairly new motherboard intel chip I only 2 sata ports on my MB I have 2 HDD conected two them and I bought a PCI SERIAL ATA host controller card thinking I could attach 2 sata DVD writers but my bios wont read the new DVDs any help on how to get them both running?:confused:

[Dalo Harkin]

It should read them - have you installed the drivers in windows and then attached the opticals?

[Tootech]

Can you post motherboard model number, and the SATA card make/model number?

 

Can you see the SATA card in Device Manager?

[chrispjplumbing]

It should read them - have you installed the drivers in windows and then attached the opticals?

Yea it should read them but dont and the host card I bought the CD only say XP and win 2000 ? but the host card attached to mother board the DVD s should show up in bios setup? and they dont? and of course if I ever need to boot from disk how can if not bios?

[chrispjplumbing]

Can you post motherboard model number, and the SATA card make/model number?

 

Can you see the SATA card in Device Manager?

 

 

Thanks for trying to help, the board is ABIT AS8 the sata card well its hard to tell where it came from but the cd that came with it only states XP or win 2000? so maybe I need a better card? if so can tell what 1 would suit me best? what I have on the box is (novatech sata raid ctrl card pci) ????

manufacture part FG-SA3512-2IR : I hope some of that makes sence to you

[Dalo Harkin]

Vista should find the drivers itself - have you unplugged the sata opticals and then started the system and seen if the OS picks the drivers up?

You could also try unplugging the drive that is not the OS and plugging one of the opticals into that and the HDD into the RAID card -

Some RAID cards only support RAID striped and mirrored and you need one that supports JBOD - I bought 2 from the states off EBAY they house 4 HDD each card - if you need to I can give you a link - but try what I have suggested above beforehand

[Tootech]

Just following on from what Dalo has said.....

 

When booting up, you should see an extra line in the boot screen - something like "Press Ctrl S or F4 to enter Raid Configuration" - That is the Silicon Image setup menu.

 

Press the F4 or Ctrl S, and have a look to see if your devices are shown as connected to the SATA card - they should show up.

 

If not, disconnect one drive, reboot and have another look.

 

The BIOS may not actually show the drives, but if you have a look in the Boot Menu, they will be shown as available boot devices.......but.......only if you can see them in the Silicon Image F4 menu.

 

The card has the Silicon Image 3512 SATA 150 chipset, the drivers, inc Vista are available from here:

 

Silicon Image - Support | Search Results

 

Although they are already installed (hopefully), it may be worth downloading the drivers from the Silicon Image website and updating what you have.

 

Let us know how you get on.