Question 1

- VT6426CHIPSET PC I Host Controller                                                                                           - 2 internal ports                                                                                                  - 1 external is shared by one of the internal, What is the external port connector cord or socket?

Accepted Answer

Glad to help.  This is basically a two port only card.  You have one IDE ribbon cable port for devices that still use this connection.  I have a very high quality DVD reader/burner that has an IDE connection.  You will notice that this card uses a PCI slot, which is slower than a PCIe X 1 slot, so you have two Sata 1 ports, but you can only use one or the other, therefore a two port card.  The external Sata port is e-Sata, the internal Sata port is standard Sata.

Question 2

I want to build a RAID1 using two 320GB EIDE drives I own.  This will be in an old Dell Dimension 4500.  Will this card support RAID on IDE drives and will I be able to boot XP from the drives attached to the card?  Speed isn't critical.  This is mainly for experimenting and testing.

Accepted Answer

As per manufacturers page: SATA host controller chip with 32-bit interfacing
Compliant with SATA 1.0 specification
Supports two independent SATA ports with data transfer rate up to 1.5Gb/s
Built-in 256 bytes FIFO per port for fast read/write operations
Supports microsoft generic IDE operation and intel bus master DMA operations
RAID function optional
Supports RAID function 0 and 1
Adjustable stripe size for RAID 0
Supports co-exist RAID set and Non-RAID HDD
Allow HDDs with different sizes to be configurated in a RAID set

Contents:
PCI SATA Controller Card
1 x Sata cable.
1 x User Manual
1 x Driver CD

I have not tried raid but it should work.

Question 3

Will this work with Windows 2003 SP2 server? I do not need to boot the OS, just add in storage

Accepted Answer

I would think it should.  I use it with Windows Home Server V1 to add storage.  WHS is based on Windows Server 2003.

Question 4

I have Windows 7 and data on a SATA HHD, but cpu fried ,as well as Mobo and won't run longer than 5 minutes. I have extra excellent tower, however it's mobo doesn't have SATA power connection for HHD, will this card make a Windows 7 HHD usable?

Accepted Answer

Yes and No. You motherboard will need to support booting from sata and will be listed in the bios if it is available.

Questions & Answers