- Jun 30, 2004
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I'll try to make a long story short, but I usually fail when I try.
I just happened to follow a detour path of hardware-addiction, processor-purchase, and a search for "the right board" as a used or surplus item.
So I got an ASUS Z68-Gen3 (Ivy-ready) board for $85 from an IT-asset-handling company -- dealing in corporate surplus and other sources.
One of the RAM slots had a broken extraction-lever, but the slot is just fine.
Moving on in my discovery, I'd attached a case eSATA cable and a hot-swap SATA bay to a pair of the Intel SATA-II ports. To review, these boards came with 4x SATA-II, 2x SATA-III on the Intel controller, and a 2x SATA-III AHCI-only Marvel controller.
Today, I discovered that two ports (same plastic housing -- two ports and one on top of the other) don't seem to be working for these hot-swap functions. I even saw a light go on briefly for the hot-swap bay, and then just die.
By process of elimination and moving the cables to the Marvel controller which I then enabled in BIOS, I'm concluding that the two ports are damaged or dead. The remaining 2x SATA-II and 2x SATA-III seem to be working.
I'm guessing that someone in the owner-user chain-of-custody had exerted too much force on this port pair -- that maybe there's a ring-crack in the solder joint at the motherboard.
Does my description seem consistent with that? OR do Intel controllers go bad in "groups of ports?" Everything else seems "tip-top."
If the controller itself goes entirely south (so-to-speak), I've got a Startech/Marvel 4-port PCI-E SATA-III controller I can stick in there, and it would give me "port-multiplier" function in addition to some simple RAID ( <> RAID5 or better). So I'd again have six ports of a "Marvel" flavor, and I could then shut off the Intel controller, just as I'd previously disabled the onboard Marvel controller.
Any thoughts?
I just happened to follow a detour path of hardware-addiction, processor-purchase, and a search for "the right board" as a used or surplus item.
So I got an ASUS Z68-Gen3 (Ivy-ready) board for $85 from an IT-asset-handling company -- dealing in corporate surplus and other sources.
One of the RAM slots had a broken extraction-lever, but the slot is just fine.
Moving on in my discovery, I'd attached a case eSATA cable and a hot-swap SATA bay to a pair of the Intel SATA-II ports. To review, these boards came with 4x SATA-II, 2x SATA-III on the Intel controller, and a 2x SATA-III AHCI-only Marvel controller.
Today, I discovered that two ports (same plastic housing -- two ports and one on top of the other) don't seem to be working for these hot-swap functions. I even saw a light go on briefly for the hot-swap bay, and then just die.
By process of elimination and moving the cables to the Marvel controller which I then enabled in BIOS, I'm concluding that the two ports are damaged or dead. The remaining 2x SATA-II and 2x SATA-III seem to be working.
I'm guessing that someone in the owner-user chain-of-custody had exerted too much force on this port pair -- that maybe there's a ring-crack in the solder joint at the motherboard.
Does my description seem consistent with that? OR do Intel controllers go bad in "groups of ports?" Everything else seems "tip-top."
If the controller itself goes entirely south (so-to-speak), I've got a Startech/Marvel 4-port PCI-E SATA-III controller I can stick in there, and it would give me "port-multiplier" function in addition to some simple RAID ( <> RAID5 or better). So I'd again have six ports of a "Marvel" flavor, and I could then shut off the Intel controller, just as I'd previously disabled the onboard Marvel controller.
Any thoughts?
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