BleepingComputer.com: ASUS motherboard won't take another HDD 2 SATA Ports available

I have a new computer and want to put another HDD in. This is the set up:

Processor (CPU) AMD PHENOM™ II X4 955 (3.2GHz) BLACK EDITION (Socket AM3)
Memory (RAM) 8GB CORSAIR XMS2 800MHz (4x2GB)
Motherboard ASUS® M4N78: DUAL DDR2, S-ATA II, PCIe x16, 2 x PCIe x1, 3 x PCI
Operating System Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium 64 bit Edition + SP1

Memory - 1st Hard Disk 500GB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
2nd Hard Disk 500GB SERIAL ATA 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
1st CD/DVD Drive 6x BLU-RAY ROM & HD-DVD ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£69)
2nd CD/DVD Drive 22x DUAL LAYER LIGHTSCRIBE DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Graphics Card 512MB ATI RADEON™ HD 4870 PCI EXPRESS

The Motherboard has 5 SATA ports. Three are occupied 2xHDD 1xOptical Drive. The second Optical Drive is IDE

I want to add a HDD from my old PC. I have been in touch with support from the supplier and they tell me that this motherboard has two SATA ports optimised in some way for RAID. If RAID is not installed on the PC then these two ports become redundant. That doesn't make sense to me but what can I do?

I feel a bit upset because I told them that I wanted to add my own extra drives when I was ordering. I have been able to use the drive on the machine by unpluging one of the installed drives and putting that cable in my old drive so I know the drive is working - plus it still works in the old machine.

Is it the case that the Motherboard would be set up in such a way as to render two SATA ports redundant if a RAID set up isn't used?

I don't really know much about computers.

Thanks for your help

Martin

The specs I see say that board has 6 SATA slots, yet you say 5.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813131382

If the BIOS is configured for a RAID 1, then two drives are seen by Windows as one drive.

<<That doesn't make sense to me...>>

Me either. Also doesn't make sense to me why you say that you have 5 SATA slots, when the specs say 6.

FWIW: I'm on an Asus M2AVM board right now.

Louis

hamluis, on Jul 27 2009, 03:19 PM, said:

Thanks for your interest.

The link you provide is for the Pro version. The spec for my boards is

5x Serial-ATA 3Gb/s connectors.

In my simple world I would expect that to take 5 SATA devices?

Martin

Found this, http://support.asus.com/faq/faq.aspx?model...SLanguage=en-us

Louis

From the Asus site,

"6 xSATA 3 Gb/s ports
(Legacy IDE operation is only supported on drives 1–4.)
NVIDIA® MediaShield™ Support RAID 0,1,0+1,5,JBOD "

That confirms that SATA ports 5 & 6 will only work for RAID.


martcol,

I noticed that you refered to the hard drives as "memory" in your first post.

"Memory - 1st Hard Disk"

The hard drive is not "memory" , it is srorage space.
The more storage space you have the more stuff, programs, movies,music, etc. you can have
The number , ot size , of hard drives doesn't make a computer faster.
Many people confuse the hard drive[s] with memory & think they will improve the speed if they add more .

You currwntly have 2 X 500GB hard drives.
How much TOTAL freespace have you got ?

fairjoeblue, on Jul 27 2009, 05:20 PM, said:

Sorry about the confusion with the memory thing - it was a typo from copy and paste from my pdf invoice. Although it's reaching the outer perimiter of my computer knowlege territory, I do know that memory isn't storage. The two drives are about 25% used space.

I gather that the statement about the Legacy IDE operation settles it? Does it mean that two ports on the board are for RAID only setups?

Thanks

Martin

This post has been edited by martcol: 27 July 2009 - 12:53 PM

"Does it mean that two ports on the board are for RAID only setups?"

(Legacy IDE operation is only supported on drives 1–4.)
NVIDIA® MediaShield™ Support RAID 0,1,0+1,5,JBOD "


Yes, Only SATA ports 1-4 will work with a single drive.
SATA ports 5-6 are reserved for RAID only.

fairjoeblue, on Jul 27 2009, 10:36 PM, said:

Thank you for helping out with this. I feel i) reassured that the board isn't faulty and ii) miffed that the supplier sold me a PC that I asked to be able to take a couple of extra HDDs.

I could get a caddie for the drive and saw this one: http://www.morecomputers.co.uk/productrevi...pn=uni3510uebgb

I don't know much about these things but that looked good because it is eSATA, will accept SATA II drives and has a fan. I don't expect anyone to tell me to buy this thing but is there anything I should be looking out for? Shall I start a new thread somewhere as this is in "Internal hardware?"

Regards

Martin

This post has been edited by martcol: 28 July 2009 - 03:06 AM

The enclosure having a eSATA connection is a moot feature since your motherboard doesn't have a eSATA port.

If I were going to buy a external enclosure I would skip the "eSATA" because not many motherboards have the port [yet] .
What I would look for is USB 2.0 & external power.
Most every computer has a USB port & front USB is popular so no having to get to the back of the unit.
Unfortunatly not all USB ports supply enough power to make a external drive work so I'd want an additional power source,

fairjoeblue, on Jul 28 2009, 02:04 PM, said:

Actually fairjoeblue, this board does have one eSATA port at the back.

I think it's quite a new card.

Does your advice change if there's an eSATA port available?

Thanks

Martin