ASM1061 SATA controller not recognized in non-UEFI motherboard

[Wag]

I have an older Asus P5N-D/Q9550 setup which I'm giving to a friend. I'm putting an SSD in there and I'd like to use a sata controller in it so I can get the full SATA III/Trim features on the SSD. For some reason the motherboard refuses to see the PCI-e card.

It works fine in a newer X99 motherboard, but it can't be seen when I boot to legacy mode.

Any ideas or am I SOL?

 

[rastaban]

My guess is you need a driver to boot from PCI-E (kind of like NVMe drivers for the newer PCI-E SSDs) so if it doesn't exit, you're SOL.

In my experience, you're better off using a native SATA II port for SSD's than a non-native SATA III since those add-on chips sometimes drop out when booting or coming out of sleep. I also read somewhere that older ASMedia SATA III chips don't even come close to SATA III rated speeds, barely surpassing SATA II anyways.

 

[Wag]

My guess is you need a driver to boot from PCI-E (kind of like NVMe drivers for the newer PCI-E SSDs) so if it doesn't exit, you're SOL.

In my experience, you're better off using a native SATA II port for SSD's than a non-native SATA III since those add-on chips sometimes drop out when booting or coming out of sleep. I also read somewhere that older ASMedia SATA III chips don't even come close to SATA III rated speeds, barely surpassing SATA II anyways.

I tried that and it didn't work. For some reason the SSD I purchased is stuck at SATA I speeds on my NForce based motherboard (I read that's a common problem). It seems the Asmedia based card doesn't play nice with my non-AHCI motherboard- sometimes it's seen, most of the time not. I even flashed it to the latest IDE ROM, then tried the AHCI version. No difference.

I tried using an older Marvel based Sata II PCI-E card I had lying around and while the drives show up in the BIOS no problem, once again it's stuck at SATA I speeds.

I just picked up a newer SATA III based Marvel card off eBay but I don't have high hopes. I think it has something to do with the crappy NForce chipset/non-AHCI motherboard combo.

My last option would be to try a UASP based 2.5" enclosure, with a UASP 3.0 card. That should work- no reason why it shouldn't. But with such an old motherboard, who knows? Too much trouble.

I can boot Win10 off an external SSD, correct?

 

[spine]

Just throwing this in... but you might try looking in your bios for any HDD boot delay options, and see if you can set your SSDs to delay powering up.

May or may not help with either configuration, assuming you even have such options...

 

[Wag]

Just throwing this in... but you might try looking in your bios for any HDD boot delay options, and see if you can set your SSDs to delay powering up.

May or may not help with either configuration, assuming you even have such options...

Unfortunately I don't. It's an old motherboard.

I have seen other people with the P5N-D say they've been able to get faster transfers with a Marvell based SATA III controller card. Hopefully this will resolve it. I think the Marvell II card I had was too old to have AHCI support. I would have tried buying another Asmedia 1061 based card but I didn't want to risk it. At least the Marvell II card works.