Question SY-PEX40039 with asus M5A78L-M PLUS/USB3 ?

[andrepartthree]

Hi all .. apologies for the dumb question but... like many people I've run out of sata ports.. in my case I just want one extra sata port inside the computer I can hook my DVD Rom reader/writer to with a long sata cable (incredibly old school I know, who uses DVD's/CD's anymore? But I end up having to burn them for old school people : ) )

Unfortunately all six of my sata slots on my asus M5A78L-M PLUS/USB3 are in use supporting various hard drives.... power supply is like 850 watts or so with a ton of power supply cables to power various devices including sata's, so not too concerned about powering everything... however I'm wondering if the " I/O CREST 2 Port SATA III PCI-e 2.0 x1 Controller Card Asmedia ASM1061 Non-Raid with Low Profile Bracket SY-PEX40039 " would work with my motherboard? PC part picker unfortunately does not appear to list cards of this type and a google search didn't help me either ... here's a link to the pci-e sata expansion card below on amazon

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005B0A6Z...8-2334-423f-91e5-01bc5c93167a&pd_rd_wg=WHDEj&

a link to my motherboard on walmart

https://www.walmart.com/ip/3TFMUNI1UD0J

Thanks in advance to anyone who reads this and responds ...

 

[andrepartthree]

Well edit and update this may help anyone who is considering buying that particular pci-e sata card (maybe buy a different card instead?... you get what you pay for ? this pci card was cheap I will admit ) ... while technically it did work and I didn't install any drivers (maybe that's the problem... but very difficult to find support info for this video card online, drivers CD it ships with is very confusing gives literally a zillion different drivers so you have to "guess" which one is right for the card) .. it's messing with the BIOS... it's an easy enough fix, I turn the PC on, groan when I see it pausing at a black screen with a flashing white dash, go into BIOS and tell the asus motherboard yet again to boot from the drive it's supposed to ... and this wasn't happening prior to installing the pci-e sata card so I'm thinking it's confusing the heck out of the motherboard for some reason ... doesn't take me much time but still very annoying having to do this every day I turn on the PC...

Anyways, my CD/DVD writer is up and running, tested it, it burns files onto DVD's that can be read on other PC's with no problem and reads CD's/DVD's inserted into it with no difficulties too so at least that problem is sovled

 

[andrepartthree]

another edit and update - I'm an idiot ... I saw the manufacturer's support webpage here

http://www.sybausa.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=151

and skimmed through it way too quickly, completely missing the "download" link that was there and assuming there were no drivers to download.. foolish on my part.. I've downloaded the drivers which apparently are version 1.1 " Windows 7, 8, 10, w/ auto-installer " .. like an idiot however I missed a more recent available driver download " Windows XP, WIn Server 20003, Vista, WIn Server 20008, Win7 And Win 8 " version 3.2 ... still, since I have already installed version 1.1 driver (and sure enough it's now showing in my device manager as an "asmedia 106x SATA controller" under the "storage controllers" category) , I'll go with that for now and see if that solves my BIOS problem.

I really wish I'd come across this very helpful amazon review before installing the pci card.. here's a copy and paste of part of it thanks to "Micheal M" on amazon... of course I didn't follow any of this advice since I wasn't aware of it (had the CD/DVD writer hooked up to the pci-e sata card when I had the PC off then booted Windows up with the CD/DVD writer hooked up to the pci-e card's sata port) ... I haven't experimented with setting the BIOS sata controllers to AHCI instead of IDE which sure enough they are currently set at.. I'm going to wait to see if the driver install solves the BIOS problem first then try that if necessary... (copy and paste of Micheal's advice follows)

" There are some installation nuances that one needs to consider when installing this for bootable drives, that I think others who negatively rated this product may have not considered:

-Set your BIOS SATA controllers to AHCI mode, not IDE. A lot of people forget to set this, as most motherboards default to IDE. IDE will artificially slow your drives and possibly create conflicts with this card.

-The hardware/card should be installed first, without attaching any drives to it. This is so Windows can recognize the hardware and make the appropriate changes to the OS. Once booted into Windows, install the drivers (I went to the Syba website and downloaded the latest, rather than using those on the disk) and restart, insuring that the device is fully recognized. Failure to do this and you are almost guaranteed a blue screen.

-Once you ensure that Windows recognizes this, turn off your computer and attach your boot drive to this card. Turn back on go back into your BIOS and make sure you set hard drive boot priority to this drive. Newer motherboards should have the ability to select and detect bootable add on cards. It should appear as SCSI Add On Card with your hard drive model listed next to it. Most consumer motherboards (Asus, Gigabyte, EVGA, Foxconn, etc) will support this.

!! -If you are using a prebuilt PC, such as from Dell, HP, etc, your BIOS is likely locked down, and this card will probably not work for you if you intend to use it for bootable drives. If you are in this category, you will most likely only be able to use this for secondary non-boot drives. "

 

[andrepartthree]

Well the drivers aren't doing much good as far as the BIOS annoyances (see below).. downgraded my initial 5 star review down to 3 stars.. note that this is not a criticism of Micheal's advise below and worst case scenario if it doesn't work for you just go back into BIOS and reset the AHCI back to IDE - having said that when I tried doing that got that annoying " Windows has run into a problem and needs to restart " blue screen error message and when I went into BIOS Windows was not seeing four of my six SATA drives - changed from AHCI back to IDE and that fixed the problem but you may not run into this issue depending on your particular motherboard / Windows installation... I'll try installing the version 3.0.2 drivers I mentioned below but I doubt that will help... fortunately given that my computer is relatively fast, it doesn't take a huge amount of time to have to go into the BIOS and reset the proper boot hard drive to first priority EVERY SINGLE TIME I TURN MY DANG COMPUTER ON ! ... but it is annoying... it could be due to simply not following the instructions Micheal mentioned below .. or it could be my ASUS motherboard is simply hostile towards this particular PCI-E sata card ... if I get annoyed enough I will disconnect the CD/DVD writer, uninstall the e-sata card drivers, reinstall, then reconnect the CD/DVD writer and see if that helps.

I suppose I should mention the actual name of the pci-e sata card too instead of just inserting a link so it pops up in google searches in case anyone else is using my particular motherboard and this pci card and does some google research... the name of the pci-e sata card is " I/O CREST 2 Port SATA III PCI-e 2.0 x1 Controller Card Asmedia ASM1061 Non-Raid with Low Profile Bracket SY-PEX40039 "

 

[andrepartthree]

hopefully the final edit which should probably be titled " How to rescue your pci-e sata card install if you were stupid like me " ... which has actually worked, 5 days now of the BIOS behaving itself without me having to go into BIOS every dang time I start the PC and tell it to boot from the correct hard drive, will update if I have any issues in the future but for now still working smoothly so yay

(you may want to purchase your own, possibly long, sata cable to go with this when you order it from amazon despite this being packaged with a sata cable, see below towards the end of my review)

I REALLY wish they would include all of this in some printed sheet of instructions with the card rather than a generic " We recommend reinstalling Windows when you do this"... sure in theory you could lose ALL your programs and documents, reinstall Windows and then just restore the stuff or do that pain in the butt "reinstall Windows without losing your personal stuff" option and hope it works.. but honestly who's going to do that?

Here's what worked for me without having to reinstall Windows and I SO wish Micheal's advice appeared FIRST in all the amazon reviews here it would have saved me a LOT of time and effort...

- go to the website mentioned below (Syba) download version 3.0.2 drivers (but do NOT install them yet) which should work for all versions of Windows that exist at this time except Windows 10 apparently (you could try version 1.1 of the drivers for Win 10 but I can't vouch for them ... not sure if it was that earlier version of the drivers that was the problem or not installing the pci-e card properly as I'm about to get into below).. then there's version 3.2.0 of the drivers which presumably is the newest but simply says Windows drivers without specifying which version of Windows which does not inspire confidence .. I dunno, backup your Windows installation first with Acronis or something, try it and see what happens?

- anyways, after downloading drivers 3.0.2 version (not sure if this will help at all if you're running Win 10 see above), you're going to want to go into your control panel option then add/remove programs then uninstall the asmedia program if you previously installed drivers from the syba website.. just uninstalling the asmedia entry under storage controller in device manager isn't enough as I found out the hard way , you have to go through the add/remove program route first, then check device manager and uninstall from there if necessary.

- reboot your computer then turn it off again

- unplug power cable from PC, disconnect your CD/DVD writer from the pci-e sata card... in my case I just removed the sata cable from the sata port on the pci-e sata card and left the sata / power cable in on the CD/DVD writer for the time being

- plug power cable back in, turn PC back on.. even if Windows auto-installs drivers for the pci-e sata card don't trust those drivers, at this point you want to run that version 3.0.2 of the drivers I mentioned above (or if you're running Windows 10 I guess go for version 3.2.0 of the drivers and see what happens - if that doesn't work then I guess try version 1.1 of the drivers and if that doesn't work try version 3.0.2 and cross your fingers - remember the whole pain in the butt method of removing the syba drivers each time that I mentioned above and to reboot the computer each time you remove syba drivers) .. after install is complete, check storage controllers in device manager to ensure "asmedia 106x SATA controller" shows in that category when you click on it

- reboot computer, turn computer off

- unplug power/electric cable for PC, reconnect SATA cable from CD/DVD writer to sata port on PCI-e sata card, plug power cable back into PC, turn computer back on again

- test CD/DVD writer to make sure it works (write files onto it then see if another PC can read files from the CD or DVD, pop a CD or DVD in there and see if CD/DVD writer can see the files on the CD or DVD)

And that's how I managed to rescue the card from my clumsy, no idea what I was doing intial install and maybe this will work for you too if you're having problems with the card... obviously the best approach would have been to install the pci-e sata card first without connecting anything to it (no CD/DVD writers or hard drives or whatever), installing the correct drivers per the method mentioned above, reboot, connect your CD/DVD writer or hard drive or whatever to it, reboot then see if you have any problems.

I have no idea how well plugging a hard drive into the pci-e sata card would work and quite frankly I'm not even going to try given the horror stories I've heard about this (though you can try it and see what happens? There are a lot of success stories too from the amazon reviews so maybe it'll work for you)... it's been 5 days and BIOS is back to behaving itself properly, I don't have to go into BIOS every time I restart the dang computer and tell BIOS what hard drive to boot from anymore so happy about that ..

 

[andrepartthree]

Well the PC went right back to the whole annoying " I don't know which drive to boot from so I'm just going to stare at you with my black screen and a flashing dash" mode... easily fixed as mentioned below but annoying... so I used the latest version (version 3.2.0) and despite the manufacturer not specifying which version of Windows it's compatible with on their website, I can confirm that.. for the time being at least.. it's working fine for my Windows 8.1 installation , for about 10 days now no problem... I did have to uninstall the old drivers (as mentioned below make sure you go into "add/remove programs" and look for the asmedia drivers and uninstall from there first, reboot computer, install 3.2.0 drivers, check in device manager under storage controllers to ensure asmedia is showing there, reboot computer) ...

I will admit I was lazy and did not open up the computer and disconnect the CD/DVD writer from the pci-e sata card like I probably should have done (see below for steps involving this) so no idea if that will create problems in the future.. I will update this review accordingly if I have any issues but I'm beginning to suspect you'll have to follow these exact same steps and reinstall the driver every few weeks... annoying but not the end of the world and from the reviews I'm reading online the moment you use a pci-e sata card (as opposed to the "native" sata controllers already built into the motherboard) some computers going to run into problems regardless so maybe it's unavoidable if you're one of the unlucky ones? At the end of the day it's still a cheap way of letting me use my CD/DVD writer and have six hard drives plugged into my motherboard all at the same time so I can live with it.

 

[andrepartthree]

About a month and two weeks since I updated to version 3.2.0 drivers and no problems at all, PC is booting up smoothly without any " what hard drive should I boot from? " errors.. will update this thread if things change but I think the 3.2.0 drivers solved the problem

 

[andrepartthree]

Wow I've never had anyone mark my post as a best answer before thank you ... maybe I'm not entirely as stupid as a box of rocks as I like to think of myself .. having said that .. in all honestly much as I hate to say this, recently Windows "forgot" again and got stuck in the BIOS screen as mentioned above.. again an easy fix, go into BIOS and tell the PC to boot from the right hard drive... but then you have to follow the steps I mentioned above as far as uninstalling the drivers from add/remove programs then reinstall the drivers ... so even with the newest drivers you'll probably still have to do this say once every 3 months or that's what I've found anyways.. given how cheap the PCI card is though I can live with it, maybe there's more expensive PCI sata cards out there that save you the grief (though from what my online research shows pretty much any time you try to install a sata port through PCI you're in for a variety of headaches... darn motherboards, six on board sata ports isn't enough I need more darn it ... well that is if you're cheap like me and insist on not tossing your older hard drives because you can still get a use out of them )