This old Biostar MCP^ PB M2+ board has been going for a long time but it only has 2 SATA-- which may even be failing.
Over time I have updated the system drivers for x64 operation under Windows Ultimate x64. This was done maybe 2 years ago now. The current CPU is AMD Phenom x3.
I’ve communicated with Startech tech but the system is the problem.
On the Biostar rig, the card , a two Port SATA, is not seen in Device Manager. On an MSI board setup I have, the board is seen in Windows XP (soon to be converted to the newer Win7 OS.)
How can this site help with that? The Award BIOS contains RAID settings which are currently disabled. Win 7 does not ask for any F6 floppy routines that I know of. I went through that hell previously.
Please provide any starting points or guides for this simple card installation. I have driver disks for both XP and newer x64 obtained from the Startech site. I also looked up a Win7 F6 installer routine .exe but haven’t been near that in a while.
I got through the last BIOS tweak and that should be the latest and last available for this discontinued board.
Best to start from the beginning.
@ loninappleton:
Welcome at Win-RAID Forum!
To find out the suitable SATA driver for your StarTech add-in card, we need to know
a) the manufacturer of the SATA Controller, which is on the add-on card, and
b) the SATA mode (AHCI or RAID) of the Controller.
According to what I found by doing a Google search your 2-Port SATA Controller card has a Marvell 91xx SATA3 Controller, which is running in RAID mode.
If I should be right, you will find a suitable driver within the start post of >this< thread within the chapter “E. Marvell” point b).
Good luck!
Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)
This is likely way before SATA 3
The card though the disk is marked 2 port for drivers has 3 SATA connects and 1 IDE.
It came to me from our friends at Ebay though I have the original disk and it may have some text on it.
The controller on this PCI card is:
VIA
TV6421A
1400CD Taiwan
2IA002847
In this case you will have to use a VIA RAID driver.
You can find it >here< within the chapter "I. VIA". If it shouldn’t work, please search for the driver, which is on the driver CD you got with the PCI card.
Just checked the manufacturer disk.
It has a folder of WIN64 drivers but not read.me text.
How does the install of the VIA take place? Usually a discovery process by the OS says new hardware found or you can see it in Device Manager in Win7. This is where my problem is: No process of discovery initiates on the problem Biostar mb amd no 'Raid device unknown detected ’ (Yellow question mark symbol).
So there is no "Unknown device" with a yellow flag shown within the Device Manager?
If yes, please expand the Device Manager section "Storage Controllers" and look for a RAID Controller.
If there is an "Unknown device", right click onto it, choose "Update Diver Software" > "Browse my computer…" > "Browse" > navigate to the folder, where the (unzipped) driver files are > "OK".
I’ve re-inspected my Device Manager and see a VIA Raid driver this trip through. It is called the
VIA -VT16421 Raid Controller in Device manager. I checked for an install driver prompt with right click on the entry in DM, Win7 said all was ok.
And I changed out a SATA connector. The device is now functioning and I’ll test it with some other
’storage’ drives not currently on system. I’ll Also attempt to boot from the card.
But this brings up my other observation and why I might have dropped using the SATA port expansion card:
the added hard disk does not show up in POST Power On Self Test with my boot drive and DVD.
Is there another setting in BIOS which would reveal the added 'Raid" device at POST?
Here’s what I have now:
at Bios > Integrated Peripherals> IDE function Setup . Configure RAID (top of screen)
RAID Enable is Disabled
SATA 1 Primary RAID is disabled
SATA 1 Secondary RAID is disabled.
What settings should this BIOS screen have?
Also is there an advantage to using your custom drivers over what I have installed?
Last, I normally use Norton Ghost to make my clone backups. I do not know if that will function yet.
At least we have some progress. 
@ loninappleton:
Since your SATA card is inserted into one of the PCI(e) slots, the connected device(s) are not shown within the BIOS. Only SATA drives, which are directly connected with one of the on-board SATA ports, will be visible within the BIOS.
I don’t know why you have bought the add-in card, because your on-board SATA Controller obviously does support RAID as well.
Now to the drivers: As long as everything works fine, I recommend to chance nothing.
Ok.
To test the operation of Ghost I’ll use some old drives.
Reason for the card: there’s only two SATA on the mainboard
and if I want to use a dvd loader and clone disks I need three connects. Adding an SSD at some point
(boot drive would be attached to the board) may be an option
My test of running Ghost from DVD/CD drive failed. I also swapped around the DVD/CD to the PCI card with it set as first boot order. Also failed.
So what I have with the card is the ability to see a hard disk and ability to copy direct from it but no possibility to
clone drives.
@ loninappleton:
Why do you want to clone drives, which are using a completely different interface and different storage drivers?
I just don’t understand your question here. The purpose of the SATA card is to add an additional SATA port.
The alternative is get a new board with 4-6 of them on it like my MSI board (a bit newer.)
Just now, I can get files off of it but that’s all. Hooking up the DVD is another component that will not boot from the the card. I’ve tried the available possibilities.
That’s why I asked about changing the Raid settings since these add-in cards ( I used a Rosewill one for IDE years ago) always install like that.