How do you fit a SATA port adapter?

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Freeley

Well-known member
Hi all my first post on here for some time just had my first problem with my pc which i bought about a year ago.
I have a sandy bridge system which has the buggy motherboard, i went for the option of having a sata port adapter sent out to me rather than returning my pc to them for fixing.
As i had no issues i never got round to fitting it partly as i had no idea how to do it!

However this week i had a BSOD for no apparent reason and it seemed to corrupt windows which would no longer start - i rebooted from the windows dvd and attempted a repair (which failed) but i was able to do a system restore and all was seemingly rosy as everything has been working since.
I emailed PCS at the time and received a response today saying that there was a good chance that the sata controller was not working properly and suggesting i fit the port adapter.
Tonight my pc is sluggish again (i'm trying to do a system backup and image which is crawling along) so i want to fit the adapter but have no idea how to do it. So i was wondering if anybody can advise me on how to do it please?
I'm guessing that it's fairly simple but i could really do with somebody holding my hand before i do it! I emailed PCS today but probably won't get a response until next week and don't want to wait that long as i think it will fail again soon.

The adapter has 4 ports on it and looks like it plugs into the motherboard somewhere? Can anyone suggest where i should be plugging this into the motherboard and what i should be connecting to it. I have 2 optical drives but am not sure if i need to plug these into the adapter or just the HDD. Also are there any settings i need to change or is it just a matter of unplugging and plugging in again?

Any advice appreciated my specs are below:

Case COOLERMASTER CM690 MKII ADVANCED CASE
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7-2600 Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics
Motherboard ASUS® P8P67 PRO: USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, CrossFireX™ / SLI SUPPORT
Memory (RAM) 8GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)
Graphics Card 1280MB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX570 - 2 DVI,mHDMI - DirectX® 11, 3D Vision Ready
2nd Graphics Card NONE
Memory - 1st Hard Disk 1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
2nd Hard Disk 1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
3rd Hard Disk NONE
4th Hard Disk NONE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Change to: 12x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£44)
2nd DVD/BLU-RAY Drive NONE
Change to: 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Change to: NONE
Power Supply CORSAIR 850W TX SERIES (TX850) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU (£99)
Processor Cooling SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£19)
Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities ONBOARD GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI CARD (£17)
 
F

Freeley

Well-known member
OK i've opened up my case to have a look and think i can see what i need to do.
The adapter has a metal clip down one side so needs to fix onto the case mounting which means there is only one slot on the motherboard that it could plug into - a long light coloured slot (grey, green or white can't really tell) which is between two blue slots one of which is unused and the other holds the wireless network card. Underneath the light coloured slot it says "Dual intelligent processors II", just mentioning that in case anyone who is familiar with my motherboard will know if this is the right slot to plug my adapter into.

Directly to the right of this slot on the side of the motherboard are the sata ports for the HD's ( i have two) and the optical drives.
The HD's are piggybacked into a double port, blue in colour so will definitely plug these into my adapter.
One optical drive is plugged into the blue port next to it and the other optical drive is plugged into a light coloured port next to that.

My adapter has 4 ports on it but i'm sure it was described to me as a 2 port adapter at the time so not sure if all these ports are usable? 2 of them have "SATA RAID" chips underneath them so don't know if i should be plugging anything into these or not as my hd's aren't RAID.

Could anyone confirm what i need to do please? I'm not touching it until someone knowledgeable on here or PCS staff can let me know what to do!

Cheers.
 
tom_gr7

tom_gr7

Life Serving
I dont really know what to suggest only to give pcs a call, If you check the waiting times here, you can save yaself waiting on hold.
 
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Freeley

Well-known member
Spoke to PCS today and they explained how to install the port adapter - have done it and everything works!
Fingers crossed this will solve the problem.
 
F

Freeley

Well-known member
Oh dear things have gone t##s up!
Turned on the pc today and when windows tried to start i had a flash of bsod, a restart and the dos screen saying that windows wouldn't start.
After much mucking about it seemed to be saying that the boot file had been corrupted (god knows how)

Tried repairing unsuccessfully with the windows dvd- unknown os on unknown disk volume.

Started attempting restoring a system image from my 2nd hd and then cancelled it after changing my mind cos i was going out and it now looks like my c drive has been wiped!

So was going to either continue tomorrow with either another image restore or starting again with a clean install of windows 7 and doing an image restore afterwards.
Was wondering if anyone could give me any advice on which way to go.
Was also thinking about unplugging my d drive prior to installing windows just to make sure that nothing is wiped on that during the reinstall. Would this be a good idea or not?

Kind of desperate for a bit of advice please.
 
F

Freeley

Well-known member
I tried reinstalling windows first in the end but wouldn't even start - said the cd/dvd devices were missing drivers???
So i restored from my image back up and everything is working again now.
Will have to keep my fingers crossed that it stays that way - i still can't work out how it was fine when i switched it off and was corrupt when i turned it back on the next day.
 
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Wozza63

Biblical Poster
sorry if this is completely off topic but i havent been able to read the whole thread but, did you check in the BIOS to make sure the boot drive is actually set as boot drive?
 
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