ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK 24x SATA Internal DVD Writer

I have a new Dell XPS 8500 and purchased this so that I could add my old hard drives. I had just purchases a Mediasonic external SATA enclosure which supported SATA I/II/III as well as USB 3.0. The external box on USB worked great, but I wanted to make sure that the drives would have the best performance especially in simultaneous access since I would be using this for a SQL Server. I decided to give ESATA a shot. I am not certain whether it is running at 3 GBS or 6, but I do know that the useful performance is better when doing simultaneous read and write operations on multiple drives than USB 3.0. In fact, I actually experience better performance on the external drives than I do with the two internal drives using the system board ATA ports. Installation was super easy. Windows 7 Pro, 64 bit. Put in the card. Boot the computer to let it recognize the card. Power down and attach the external drives. Boot again and you are in business. It was only later that I installed the drivers. Windows 7 did recognize it and it worked, but it whined about not have specific drivers. I noticed no performance difference after installing the drivers, which was quite painless. The only difference is that Windows stopped complaining. I only have one box of drives connected so I cannot address the issues that others have mentioned, but I am thrilled with this and would recommend it.

R. P. Poletti · 2012-09-03 · via amazon

My home server does not have E-SATA port while my backup RAID has only E-SATA interface. That forced me to look for a E-SATA controller. I have decided to go with this one. Installation was smooth and Windows recognized without problems but upon data transfer to the backup RAID system, system would freeze and eventually driver error would pop out. Later I have found out that my motherboard does not work well with the adapter if connected to the lowest port. After trying all compatible ports I have found ones that worked. Now I enjoy fast backup speeds. I almost sent it back though. Update: The story repeats itself with system hanging or crashing. Do NOT buy it.

diy enthusiast · 2013-08-16 · via amazon

I bought a new i7 computer running Windows 7 recently and can't use the old eSATA card so decided to buy a new one. After reading not so good reviews on some of the other eSATA cards and saw lots of returned eSATA cards in my local electronic stores, I worried that this card might not be easy to install. However, many reviews on this cards on Amazon seem to be pretty positive and I decided to give it a try. Followed the steps listed in installation guide, opened the computer chassis, plugged the card into an empty PCIE slot, powered up the computer, Windows tried to install the driver but failed. But according to the installation guide, no driver installation is needed for Windows 7. So I followed the path listed in the guide and verified that the card is seen by Windows. Powered down my computer and connect my LaCie 4Big eSATA box to my computer, powered up again and the drive is there - no problem at all. The whole process took less than 5 mins. The data transfer seems to be pretty speedy, much faster than my 4-yr old card but it might be because my new computer is much more powerful and has a lot more memory than my old one. All-in-all, satisfied with the purchase.

Wing · 2012-08-16 · via amazon

I have purchased the "2x eSATA III" option otherwise known as "StarTech PEXESAT32 2 Port SATA 6 Gbps PCI Express eSATA Controller Card" for a PC that absolutely requires PM (Port Multiplier) support to access individual drives connected behind a port multiplier. Contrary to many Amazon reviews on this product page, this card is in fact 100% Port Multiplier Aware, but as shown in the Marvell 88SE9128 Product Brief (you can Google this), a manual driver installation is required on all versions of Windows in order to enable this feature. PC: Dell XPS 8900 STORAGE ARRAY #1: Lacie eSATA 2 Drive Enclosure (Si Image SiI4723 Port Multiplier) STORAGE ARRAY #2: SV2000 Steelvine eSATA 5 Drive Enclusre (Si Image SiI4726 Port Multiplier) OS: Windows 10 (current build) HOW TO GAIN PORT MULTIPLIER SUPPORT: My PC struggled to eventually only access the first drive in each of the above storage arrays when I followed the printed StarTech instructions from July 2011 included with the product. These were released before Windows 10, but indicate that for Windows 7 no driver is required because a driver is integrated into Windows. This is only true if you plan to directly connect a SATA HDD to one or both eSATA ports on this card. If you, instead, plan to connect multiple drives to each port with a Port Multiplier in between, then you absolutely must install a Marvell 9128 driver. Now you need to find the driver. The product includes a CDROM containing 29 different folders (with no Readme.txt or other index) for each of 29 different products that StarTech manufacturers. IMPORTANT: The correct driver for all Windows Port Multiplier applications is in the following folder on the CD: \SATA6G_M9128. You need to manually install the driver by running this program: drvSetup.exe. A sucessfull manual installation will result in a "Marvell 91xx SATA 6G Controller" entry in Windows Device Manager -> Storage controllers. FYI, I only figured this out by reading the part number on the SATA controller IC mounted on the board. SUMMARY: This card works fine in Win 10 with a Port Multiplier, but I am rating the card with only 4 stars due to poor documentation and driver that is too challenging for normal users to locate on their CDROM. Clearly this is confusing as about half of the Amazon reviews for this product state that this card is Port Multiplier Aware while the other half state that it is not (and many returned it because they didn't know that a manual driver install was required). I would recommend this product, but personally would have preferred to have purchased a card that did NOT require any driver installation for Port Multiplier compatibility. The above mentioned Marvell Product Brief has a table indication that Marvell offers 2 other SATA controller ICs that have native PM support without driver.

C. Solomon · 2016-01-03 · via amazon

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