Thursday, May 17, 2007
VIA VT6421 SATA card does the job
So I had a nightmarish time getting the Silicon Image SIL3114 card to work with just one SATA drive. The opposite happened when I received the VIA VT6421 SATA card (2 SATA, 1 eSATA, & 1 IDE port), also purchased from eBay. After booting into XP and installing the latest drives from viaarena.com, the drive was immediately recognized and works. I guess the moral of the story is to avoid the SIL3114 and go with the VT6421 if you just want extra SATA ports and don't need RAID. The VT6421 card does RAID 0 and RAID 1, but I have absolutely no interest in testing those functionalities :-).
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Did you get windows xp to boot off the sata drive ?
No- I didn't try- I just wanted to add more drives to the system and the machine had only 2 SATA connectors.
I have same thing but how you make it work like another sata port?
My pc finds the hdd but cant use it..
Do you know any solution for this?
Matelko- you might have to go to Disk Management to partition and format the drive first if it's a new drive. Right-click on My Computer, select Manage, and click on Disk Management.
i purchase this card for my pc but it doest allow boot to windows...you can only use it for sata ports .... can't install windows to drive attached to it...
Some help with the VT-6421 Sata PCI card. I am running WinXP Pro which does not recognize this card. I downloaded the Via Falcon Storage driver from Via as you did and upon installation of the driver, the installer displayed a message "this driver can only be used with installed products" then quit. The card is installed. Any ideas? Thanks.
Kimmer
Hmm- I would double check and make sure that you do have the VT-6421. Look at the chip on the controller and see if it says 6421 on it.
I just installed a 6421a in xp pro and it shows my two 300g Sata Barracudas but...They are way too slow to be operating properly ?? They are completely accessible but a simple 750mb transfer bewteen the two 30 minutes. I had existing ntfs partitions inc data on both and no os as they are for storage.
Any ideas ?
EdW
I wonder if they're running without caching turned out. Right-click on the drives, go to properties, and make sure write caching is on.
HI, I'm having lots ogçf problems by trying to let operative my PC with Raid 1 and VT6421. But I'm using Windows Pro with SP2 & SP3. That could be the problem? Should I use Windows without SP2 & SP3 to install drivers and after that the service pack`s?
Thank you very much in advance for any advice on this.
Sorry, nut I'm not familiar with these Blogs, so that is the reason I used anonymous category (I don't have an account or something like that).
Regards,
Juan Franco
^^Make sure you have the latest drivers and the VIA RAID software.
I just wanted to let everyone know that I am installing the VT6421 Raid Controller on a Dell Dimension 4300 system. This system has a new 500gb Maxtor (not from dell) with Sata 150mb/s. The system does not have anyone onboard sata ports so I'm using this controller card to run my new HD (the only HD, and therefore I'm installing WinXP Home on it). The drivers that came on the CD in the box were not working at all. Gave me an error(18) at line 2113 on the D:\ drive (the drive with the OS DVD in it) after I hit F6 and selected which driver to load from the floppy. I tried all new hardware and a second floppy disk. No go.
I followed advice from first post on this thread which told me to download the drivers from www.viaarena.com Extracted the .zip file, opened the readme.htm file and followed instructions to create a driver floppy.
XP Home is formatting the full 500gb capacity as I'm writing this. I expect no further trouble.
i had no trouble with the install, i have the card set up with 1 drive only, as other people reported in this forum, i too was after an extra sata port, for some reason when i attempt to copy a file either to or from the device my computer locks up with no log information given anywhere, anyone else experience lockups when attempting to move/copy files to or from a single drive on the VIA VT6421 sata controller?
I'd like answer to the comment posted on July 15, 2008 5:09 AM.
I'd exactly the same trouble with XP sp2. My PC froze after a while, coping file to or from the SATA disk. It wasn't hardware issue because all work fine with Ubuntu 8.04 live CD. So I installed the Service Pack 3 now it work very well.
How do I get inside the cards BIOS? My PC only stops for an error (and gives me the choices to press F1 for continue or F2 for setup) Not any choices for the cards bios setup! But with IDE-drives attached - i can see them in disk manager.
Hi
I have a VT6421 card in a legacy ibm pc which was ide only before the addition of the sata card. I added a 1 tera drive as c and d , replacing the old drive and transfering the ops sys by cloning it to the new sata drive-- not easy
The system will boot but only on 5 or 6 attempts and likewise is extremely slow. I have noticed you use the falcon driver 2.60a, so I will change to this 1 as I was using the 5.08c v raid driver
this may help my boot and slowness problem anyone else try to boot off these things -- ps my ide 1 controller no longer functions when the sata card is in place ( sorta)
I landed this same card, primarily because I also didn't need the RAID feature... I just needed a sata card.
Whether I use the drivers on the companion CD, or dl them from the arena, the card causes XP to freeze during boot up... or if I attach the drive once in Windows, then.
From what I can determine, the card is still trying to launch itself in Raid, even though it's supposed to be a non-Raid card.
Anyone had a freezing issue in Windows, and found a solution?
Thanks,
Mike
Hi,
i also have a freezing-problem with this card.
Windows XP (SP3) freezes every time during the boot sequenze.
Then i press the reset button of my pc. The system boots once more an windows reports, that the latest boot faild and have to choice, if i want to boot in protected mode or with the latest configuration or normal.
I choose "normal" an windows boots, everything is ok.
... until i turn the computer on at the next day...
What can i do?
I've got a Silicon Image PCI card with new SATA bootable disk.
The trick for SIL chipsets is that you have to flash BIOS of the card to IDE BIOS or RAID BIOS.
http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=28&cat=15
If you don't wanna to have RAID - ju got 1 disk - download:
* BIOS Update Utility for DOS
* SiI3114 IDE, SATARAID5 and system BIOS
and flash it with b5403.bin BIOS from DOS updflash.exe utility or from active Windows with SiFlashTool.exe utility.
On boot after flashing it will be present as Sil 3114 SATALink controller. With fresh install choose F6 and give newest drivers from webpage depending on your system x86 or x64, but choose one of them below.
* SiI3114 non-RAID 32-bit Windows Driver for Vista
* SiI3114 non-RAID 64-bit Windows Driver for Vista
http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=28&cat=3
When you will enter your motherboard BIOS, in boot options you will have a new positions to boot from.
I'm using Sil3512 - procedure is the same.
I installed pci board with VIA VT6421 , well I am in trouble and spent too much time, including using the advice posted on this forum.I downloaded the drivers from all sources listed in the forum.Status now :
computer managment,storage shows the hard disk I am trying to use , as healthy, but unformated.The disk was formated, and if I try to format it ussing the computer managment tool I get:"windows could not complete format".
End of story, disk is O.K. i COULD EASILY FORMAT IT ON ANOTHER COMPUTER.
aNY SUGESTION AT THIS POINT.?
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