I have installed the driver for X64 but still will not work. Does anyone have a solution? Thank you.
88SE6121 / | \ | | \ PATA SATA ESATA (back) | | SIL5723 | | SATA_E1 SATA_E2 (internal) Where are you connected ? Paul
How do you mean "not working" ??? Does it have Power?? not displayed in Explorer?? in BIOS?? has the drive been formatted ?? The Orange Connectors are "special Raid" connectors The orange ports to the left are designed for use with the Drive Xpert feature, although if no RAID setup is desired, then they can be configured for regular S-ATA use. peter
You have connectors in three places. A group of six SATA connectors, connected to the ICH10R Southbridge. A group of two connectors labeled SATA_E1 and SATA_E2, connected to the SIL5723. And a connector on the back of the computer, which is labeled as being ESATA and it connects to the Marvell 6121. The SIL5723 is a RAID controller, which makes a "generic" looking SATA volume where it connects to the 6121. The SIL5723 may be thruput limited, when compared to the other ports (there is a processor inside the 5723, to control the RAID function). Also, if you try to check the SMART status of a drive on the 5723, chances are that won't work. (Especially if you had two drives connected to the 5723, there is no way to use passthru for SMART when two drives are present.) The connection on the back of the computer, should be about as fast as the six ICH10R ports. There may be some reason to use the SIL5723 (such as making backups by setting it in a RAID 1 mirror mode), but other than that, I don't see the point. Paul
Thanks for the info Paul. I gave up on the esata and connected the external drive to one of the internal ports and all is well.
I actually did the same thing, have the same board. The esata port worked fine for me, but for the hotplugging capability it seems to need Marvell's proprietary driver. Worked fine in Windows XP 32 bit, but I had no luck with Linux.
I suppose Asus had the idea that this would make for easier RAID setup. For the 5723 RAID setup can be done with a pretty GUI in the included Linux environment (Express Gate) without having to install anything. Even drivers aren't needed for Windows, apparently. Haven't tried it, don't like proprietary RAIDs anyway. Of course I don't think it's particularly helpful to invent new terms like "Super Speed" instead of RAID0 and "EZ Backup" instead of RAID1.
Go to Asus support site and specifically lookup XP64 drivers for SATA for your board. You want to download and install this driver. Marvell 6121 SATA Driver V1.2.0.68 for Windows XP & 64bit XP & 32/64bit Vista & 32/64bit Windows7.
I rarely use the esata drive in Windows, so don't really know. It doesn't come up as a removable drive in XP, so I don't dare unplug it while running.
