I've just bought a new 1TB internal SATA drive (to have some kind of back up for my external WD 1TB drive - that I'm using to rip my entire DVD collection to).
Prior to this purchase, in my PC I had...
2 x WD 250GB SATA (striped RAID array - using the Intel controller)
1 x WD 400GB SATA (also on the Intel controller)
1 x WD 120GB IDE (on the JMicron controller)
1 x DVD drive IDE (basic IDE controller)
The new drive (as mentioned) is SATA and is supposed to be replacing my 120GB IDE drive, but on first glance my motherboard (Asus P5W DH Deluxe) doesn't appear to have enough usable SATA ports on it.
There are 2 orange SATA ports (using a Silicon Image controller) which are hard-wired for RAID0/1 (called "EZ-Backup" by Asus) - but apparently it's bloody slow (compared to the Intel/JMicron controllers).
There's 2 on the Intel controller and 1 internal + 1 external on the JMicron controller.
So I'm already using the 3 internal ones.
I stupidly figured I could use one (or both) of these orange ports (on the Silicon Image controller) as standard SATA ports and connect my new 1TB drive to it...I spent 4 hours f**king about with it before I gave up trying. I even considered just using the EZ-Backup RAID instead of my existing array just to get the bloody thing working!
This morning I was just about to give-up totally and order a PCI SATA controller (didn't really want to spend any more (wasted) money on this PC (since I want to buy a Mac Pro at some point)...then I read this page which says:
If you remove both EZ jumpers you can use the right EZ-Backup port as the 4th ICH7 port.
I tried all three combinations of jumper settings...EXCEPT removing both jumpers!!
F**KING computers really piss me off sometimes...and I'm a proper PC geek!
(I've also managed to piss my wife off by spending all evening messing around with it and swearing constantly - so apologies will be needed for her today).
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