Question Motherboard doesn't have SATA 3 ports but I was hoping to fix issue with SYBA PCI-E x1 adaptor

realghostbuster

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Hi there,

I'm hoping to purchase a new Samsung EVO 850 1TB "SATA 3" SSD and have it installed into my 8 year old computer.
The motherboard I have in this computer is an ASUS P8H61-M and it has four SATA 2 (3GB) ports. Two of these SATA ports are occupied by the DVD Disk Drive and a Seagate Barracuda 1 TB drive.
As it is an old enough motherboard it does not have any SATA 3 ports. I could of course install the new SSD into my computer and connect it to one of the remaining SATA 2 ports but I've read that I will only appreciate maybe over half the speed that I would have been able to get from the SSD if I could connect the SSD to a Sata 3 (6GB) port.

I was hoping to fix this problem by buying a "Syba SATA III 4 Port PCI-e x1 Controller Card" on Amazon and slide it into one of my free PCI-E x1 ports and then connect the Samsung SSD into one of the SATA 3 ports on the adaptor.

Is there anything wrong that you can think of with what I've described above? Is it this straightforward or should there be something I need to worry about before making my purchase of both the SSD and the Syba adaptor.

Any helpful information that you could kindly provide would be greatly appreciated!

Kind regards,

Brendan
 
Through that adapter, you probably won't be able to use that as the boot drive.

I'd say just connect it to a SATA II port. It is still way faster than your existing HDD.

It may be a bit geeky, but unlike with NVME PCIe adapters it should work if the drivers are loaded during install should Windows not identify the controller and disk. At least it did with the PATA port card I tried this with previously. But that was back a while, maybe Microsoft has broken that with later Windows10 updates?

But your point is still good: even in SATA II SSD's fly. The real advantage of SSD's is near zero access times, as much or more than transfer rate, and speeding up random file access is what makes Windows smoother and fast at startup.
 
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realghostbuster

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Thanks everyone who replied to my initial question. I'm starting to think maybe I should purchase the SSD and connect it to the spare SATA 2 port initially(when installing Windows on it etc). I don't really want to experience any awkwardness if I decided to use the Syba adapter when installing the SSD initially. It would be less messy I think if I just installed the SSD directly using the available native SATA 2 ports on my motherboard.

But I was wondering after I've installed Windows on the SSD and make it my default hard drive - at a later date would it be okay to purchase that Syba adapter, put it into the PCI-E x1 slot and take the Sata cable coming from the SSD that would have been connected to a native SATA 2 port up to that point and then connect it to the SATA 3 port that's available of the Syba adapter? Would there be anything I would need to worry about doing this? It would just be to see if the SSD would run even faster even though from reading your answers you seem to think the SATA 2 speeds would be fast enough for me.

Thanks for your help.
 

realghostbuster

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Unknown if your system can actually boot from a drive in an adapter in the PCIe slot. Not all can, especially of that vintage.
Even if the OS was on it already.

I wouldn't bother.
Okay, I think I'll follow your advice. I was just wondering down the line if I ran out of native SATA 2 ports on my motherboard would it be okay to use the Syba SATA 3 adapter in the PCI-E x1 slot to accommodate for the installation of additional SSD's whose sole purpose would purely be for storage and definitely not for the boot up of the system(Windows etc)? Thanks
 
....
But I was wondering after I've installed Windows on the SSD and make it my default hard drive - at a later date would it be okay to purchase that Syba adapter, put it into the PCI-E x1 slot and take the Sata cable coming from the SSD that would have been connected to a native SATA 2 port up to that point and then connect it to the SATA 3 port that's available of the Syba adapter? Would there be anything I would need to worry about doing this? It would just be to see if the SSD would run even faster even though from reading your answers you seem to think the SATA 2 speeds would be fast enough for me.

Thanks for your help.

You'd have to have loaded the driver for the controller in Windows before moving the drive. But even so, that would only work if the add-in controller you are buying has an option ROM, called ''OPROM". The OPROM essentially extends the main machine ROM to include code to let it read the boot block on the attached drives and initiate OS start-up. It's the OPROM code that lets you identify the correct boot device in the motherboard BIOS.

I think that's the major difference: most NVME controllers (they're actually 'bus adapters' not controllers) lack that feature so they won't support booting through it. But older add-in cards (like SATA or PATA controllers) almost always had an OPROM...and older motherboards had BIOS that would pass control to the OPROM for bootup.

What would actually be a benefit is if your older board doesn't even use UEFI, but is a conventional BIOS. That helps a lot to feel confident it would work.

I'm not sure which add-in card you are looking at, as I'm sure Syba makes several, but the one I saw on their web site states quite clearly it supports booting with Windows. So at least that one must have an OPROM.

That said, it may not be straightforward as you like. You have to do an advanced Windows installation to install the controller driver, for instance. And SATA II ain't shabby neither.

EDIT ADD: Check out this board:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...rd&cm_re=sata_III_card-_-16-124-064-_-Product

Claims bootable.. pretty good reviews. Check some of the questions with answers. No guarantees with anything these days, but it should work a charm with Windows10 to boot.
 
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realghostbuster

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Yes, it would be OK.
But by that time you might be looking at a new system anyway.

Yes your're right.

I just have one more question if that's okay? -

When I first connect my newly purchased SSD into one of the SATA 2 ports on my motherboard and turn on the PC I want to choose it as my default boot drive. But I also need to install WIndows 7 or 10 on the new SSD. I already have Windows on my exisiting 1TB Seagate hard drive. I'm just wondering how would I go about doing this? I have windows 7 and 10 on CDs somewhere in my room.

After connecting the SSD to the motherboard and turning on the computer will I just hold down F12 on my keyboard until the BIOS prompts me to choose a boot drive? I'm just trying to figure out in my head how will I then install Windows after selecting it as my boot drive. I know very little about BIOS. Will I have a prompt asking me to install Windows after selecting the SSD as my boot drive?
 

USAFRet

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If you want this new drive to be your OS boot drive, you need to install an OS on it.
What is the system running now? Win 10?

If so, read here:


Pay attention to the first part of that, where it recommends to disconnect ALL other drives during this process.


Or, you can possibly migrate the existing OS to this new drive, which is a whole different set of procedures.
We can go into detail on that if you wish.
 

realghostbuster

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If you want this new drive to be your OS boot drive, you need to install an OS on it.
What is the system running now? Win 10?

If so, read here:


Pay attention to the first part of that, where it recommends to disconnect ALL other drives during this process.


Or, you can possibly migrate the existing OS to this new drive, which is a whole different set of procedures.
We can go into detail on that if you wish.

When you say "migrate the existing OS to this new drive" do you mean to duplicate the copy of Windows 10 that's installed currently on my Seagate Barracuda hard drive or do you mean to actually take Windows 10 from the Seagate hard drive and put it onto the new SSD leaving the my current Seagate hard drive without the Windows operating system?
 

USAFRet

Titan
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When you say "migrate the existing OS to this new drive" do you mean to duplicate the copy of Windows 10 that's installed currently on my Seagate Barracuda hard drive or do you mean to actually take Windows 10 from the Seagate hard drive and put it onto the new SSD leaving the my current Seagate hard drive without the Windows operating system?
Migration: Take an exact copy of the current contents of the current OS drive, and apply that to the new drive.
Then, you wipe the old drive completely and use as desired.
(specific steps to follow, if desired)

You're getting a new 1TB Samsung?
(you mention 850 EVO...why not the 860 EVO? Same performance, just the newer model)

How much space is currently consumed on your existing HDD?
What OS are you working with?
 

realghostbuster

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Migration: Take an exact copy of the current contents of the current OS drive, and apply that to the new drive.
Then, you wipe the old drive completely and use as desired.
(specific steps to follow, if desired)

You're getting a new 1TB Samsung?
(you mention 850 EVO...why not the 860 EVO? Same performance, just the newer model)

How much space is currently consumed on your existing HDD?
What OS are you working with?
I want to get the 1TB Samsung EVO 860. I have about 7 GBs free on my existing HDD. You can imagine how slow my computer is with that kind of free space! Unfortunately a lot of the files I have on my HDD are important so I can only delete a certain amount of files to free up space. I was thinking of just installing the Samsung EVO on my motherboard and then installing Windows on it via BIOS whilst having a Windows CD in my DVD Drive. After Windows is installed on it I was hoping I can just drag and drop the most import files from my existing HDD onto the new SSD via "My Computer" or something like that. I'd leave files that aren't as important on the HDD.

Would it matter if I had two different versions of Windows installed on the existing HDD and the SSD? For example if I had installed "Windows 10 Home" on the HDD and then installed "Windows 10 Pro" on the SSD would that cause any issues? I've never done this before so I don't know if my plan is the wrong way to go! Thanks
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
I want to get the 1TB Samsung EVO 860. I have about 7 GBs free on my existing HDD. You can imagine how slow my computer is with that kind of free space! Unfortunately a lot of the files I have on my HDD are important so I can only delete a certain amount of files to free up space. I was thinking of just installing the Samsung EVO on my motherboard and then installing Windows on it via BIOS whilst having a Windows CD in my DVD Drive. After Windows is installed on it I was hoping I can just drag and drop the most import files from my existing HDD onto the new SSD via "My Computer" or something like that. I'd leave files that aren't as important on the HDD.

Would it matter if I had two different versions of Windows installed on the existing HDD and the SSD? For example if I had installed "Windows 10 Home" on the HDD and then installed "Windows 10 Pro" on the SSD would that cause any issues? I've never done this before so I don't know if my plan is the wrong way to go! Thanks
Your concept of "drag and drop" only works with your personal files...not all the applications you have on there.
And if you were to move the entirety of the current 1TB HDD to the 1TB SSD, again having only "7GB free"...that is a drive killer.
And SSD needs about 15% free space to work well.

To migrate to this new drive, you need to trim down your current HDD space to below 800GB.
Once you get to that number, we can migrate the whole thing to the new drive.
Undoubtly, there is a lot of excess gunk on that drive you can get rid of.

Time for some investigation.
Install either WinDirStat or WizTree
Run as Administrator, selecting only the drive in question.

Post a screencap here.

We can probably home in on some obvious space suckers.