Dead SATA ports

SarverSystems

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Feb 9, 2002
Messages
7,408
So I have this HP from the neighbor I am working on.

None of the 4 SATA ports work.

If I get a PCI-SATA card that has 4 SATA ports on it, will the computer boot from the card?

This is the card in question: http://www.pc-adapter.net/products/246.html

If this one cannot be booted to, are there other that can?
 
Most motherboards can boot from an add-on card, but that depends on both the motherboard and the add-on card.

I find a lot of SATA add-on cards to be fairly expensive. If the motherboard can be replaced by a cheap one, I would go that route.
 
That was my first thought, but of course its not a standard motherboard. The PCI port is located in an odd place.

I'm going to suggest to him to just scrap it and start over. Or get a new motherboard and a new case!
 
my experience with this particular Silicon Image chipset has been that I have not been able to boot from them, there are like 6 of them total in my office and I tried to make one computer boot off of them. None of them allowed any booting whatsoever, in fact the BIOS would not even recongize anything connected to the card as bootable.

Also, even if it does work, windows will probably BSOD due to a driver problem on that chipset.

You may be looking at a no-win scenario for this one.

Good luck.
 
Why not try to update the HP raid firmware if available.
Previously Silicon Image chipset has firmware to update.
 
Can't upgrade the firmware if I cant boot to any drives! And there is no option to boot to USB. Pissed me right off!

Oh well, the customer opted to replace the motherboard, and get a new case (a used Smilodon I had laying around, to save him some $$$).
 
Sorry for my stupidness.
I forgot you cannot boot with HP card attached.
So this give you no choice.
Maybe you may check with HP for support.
 
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