Legit Reviews

I am installing an external sata hard dive on my system. It is to be used for backup only. I currently have a raid 0 configuration on the Intel black controller. I currently don't have any drives installed on the Marvell controller. I know to use the red port for e-sata. With all of the Marvell issues I have read about, I was wondering if anyone has any advise or experience with an external drive on this board. The hard drive does come with its own PCI card but I would rather use the port on the motherboard if it will work. Any help would be appreciated.

I have 4 internal drive on Intel (raid 10) for OS and data, 2 internal on marvell (port 3,4 raid0) for scratch disk and AV capture, and one EXTERNAL drive (port 1-RED) for backup.
boot-priority set to: Intel>external drive>marvell and so far No problem.
I can turn ON/off the external drive anytime (brief pause in OS when turn ON). My external drive has Two partition, the first partition is active with OS, I can change the Boot-priority to external>marvell>intel and boot from external drive, in case of crash/recovery.
Hope this helps. (BTW; OS is VISTA-64)

Thanks for the reply. My system is much simpler than yours. Right now I use a usb external for backup but it is pretty full. Not sure if I even want to put an OS on the new Sata drive. Glad to hear that all is working on the Marvel controller. Did you install the new Marvel driver that was just posted? I have a partitioned raid 0 that runs xp on one partition and Vista 32bit on the other.

I have 3 drives, all connected to Intel SATA controller:
HDD 1 - SATA 0: Boot drive
HDD 2 - SATA 1: Storage drive
HDD 3 - SATA 2: eSATA drive for backup

I leave the eSATA drive power on all the time - the system thinks it is an internal drive, and is actually able to power it down for standby, hybernation, and shut down.

I have 3 HD's on Intel SATA controller. 2 - 300gb Maxtor Diamond Max in Matrix Raid (0,1) and 1 - 200gb Maxtor Diamond Max as a backup. No problems so far.
HD Tach says it's running burst speed of 244.4 MB/s, 122MB/s average read time.
Only complaint I have is HD Health doesn't read Raid drives.

If I may ask, VDDOBREV, why did you elect to put your external drive on the Intel controller instead of the Marvell red port, supposedly designed for that.

[quote="rwolds9"]Thanks for the reply. My system is much simpler than yours. Right now I use a usb external for backup but it is pretty full. Not sure if I even want to put an OS on the new Sata drive. Glad to hear that all is working on the Marvel controller. Did you install the new Marvel driver that was just posted? I have a partitioned raid 0 that runs xp on one partition and Vista 32bit on the other.[/quote]

Yes, I did install the latest Marvell driver and it works the same as before, not sure what has changed.
I always have a full backup of computer, therefore not afraid of installing new drivers…..BTW; Instead of dual-boot, I've installed “Virtual pc 2007+XPâ€

rwolds9 wrote:If I may ask, VDDOBREV, why did you elect to put your external drive on the Intel controller instead of the Marvell red port, supposedly designed for that.

I did not want to deal with Marvell, however, initially I did connect it to the red port. It caused a major OS crash (XP MCE 2005). After the system recovered from the crash, I was welcomed with a screen "We have detected that your system has changed since you last activated windows..." I was locked out of my legitimate Windows, with a phone number to call customer support. I did called them and they asked what I was doing, and if the OS was installed in more than one PC. They gave me a long number, and my OS was re-activated.
I then said I am not going to deal with such bs, so I disabled Marvell and pluged in the eSATA drive to the Intel controller.

Your response is the reason I started this discussion. I'm looking for the most trouble free configuration. Thanks for your response.

vddobrev wrote:

rwolds9 wrote:If I may ask, VDDOBREV, why did you elect to put your external drive on the Intel controller instead of the Marvell red port, supposedly designed for that.

I did not want to deal with Marvell, however, initially I did connect it to the red port. It caused a major OS crash (XP MCE 2005). After the system recovered from the crash, I was welcomed with a screen "We have detected that your system has changed since you last activated windows..." I was locked out of my legitimate Windows, with a phone number to call customer support. I did called them and they asked what I was doing, and if the OS was installed in more than one PC. They gave me a long number, and my OS was re-activated.
I then said I am not going to deal with such bs, so I disabled Marvell and pluged in the eSATA drive to the Intel controller.

How did you get that to work? If I put the Enermax Chakra eSATA cable to any of the black/Intell SATA ports, Vista won't start or it crashes. But if I put it on the red port, as speciifed in the manual, and install the Marvell Vista drivers, it works fine.

BUT, I have to install those damn Marvell Vista drivers which includes Apache and other things I don't want.

How can I get just the Marvell Vista drivers?

GamingDaemon wrote:

vddobrev wrote:

rwolds9 wrote:If I may ask, VDDOBREV, why did you elect to put your external drive on the Intel controller instead of the Marvell red port, supposedly designed for that.

I did not want to deal with Marvell, however, initially I did connect it to the red port. It caused a major OS crash (XP MCE 2005). After the system recovered from the crash, I was welcomed with a screen "We have detected that your system has changed since you last activated windows..." I was locked out of my legitimate Windows, with a phone number to call customer support. I did called them and they asked what I was doing, and if the OS was installed in more than one PC. They gave me a long number, and my OS was re-activated.
I then said I am not going to deal with such bs, so I disabled Marvell and pluged in the eSATA drive to the Intel controller.

How did you get that to work? If I put the Enermax Chakra eSATA cable to any of the black/Intell SATA ports, Vista won't start or it crashes. But if I put it on the red port, as speciifed in the manual, and install the Marvell Vista drivers, it works fine.

BUT, I have to install those damn Marvell Vista drivers which includes Apache and other things I don't want.

How can I get just the Marvell Vista drivers?

I don't know, it just works. I have Marvell disabled, and SATA in AHCI mode. Try with these settings.

vddobrev wrote: I don't know, it just works. I have Marvell disabled, and SATA in AHCI mode. Try with these settings.

Hmmm, well I am running AHCI in the BIOS and I installed Vista 32 with the Intel F6 RAID drivers. I will try the black ports again and see what happens...

Well that still didn't work...until I stopped using the Enermax Chakra's eSATA/SATA cable. When I used the bracket supplied by the external SATA enclosure and plugged its SATA cable into the black ports, it worked fine.

Hmmm....at least it works now without Marvell!