Question 1

is this for connecting old floppy disks (5.25) 3.25?

Accepted Answer

No. The Parallel ATA connector (40 pin) is not the same as a Floppy Drive Connector (34 pin). A standard floppy drive will thus not work with this card.

Question 2

is this compatible with windows 10?

Accepted Answer

Unless your motherboard supports PCI (and not PCIE), VIA and SYBA have a 64 bit driver for Windows 10, but as a general rule, Windows 10 machines do not support PCI, so, No, this card will not fit in a motherboard without PCI. (which is not a PCIE)

Question 3

I am using this card for SATA HDD main drive and a PATA slave.
 I would like to have the LEDs on front panel light up when accessing either drive. Can I connect card to panel lights?

Accepted Answer

No, only drive connected to motherboard and panel lights connected to motherboards will it work.  However, more expensive controllers has a powerful co-processor and buffering ram on the controller itself that smooths out the transfers and also have LED connectors on the card itself.  I use it only to recycle old ide drives for use as extra storage drives.

You may also investigate serial to ide adapters which are also relatively slow, like this controller. If you have Win8, by copying across drives you'll notice it basically uses your onboard ram and CPU for transfer and speeds are "seasaw" like.

Don't use as system drive, you'll be disappointed by its speed as it will be the bottleneck for the HDD. Motherboard controller is a lot faster.

Question 4

Does it have to be RAID? Can I use only one SATA connector? Thinking use the other SATA connector for a E-SATA cable. Use the PATA for a DVD drive. Will this setup work? Thanks.

Accepted Answer

I've got it setup with only a PATA hard drive connected, nothing else. I needed the card to use an old hard drive I had laying around and the MB only had connectors for SATA.

Booting will take a few additional seconds as the card looks for drives, probably RAID.  Honestly I've gotten so used to it I don't actually remember what flashes up on the screen.

Question 5

is this compatible with windows 7?

Accepted Answer

I can't tell you if it works with Windows 7, but it DOES work flawlessly with Windows XP, if that helps.  It's the ONLY PCI-RAID controller I've found that gives fill compatibility with a pair of RAID drives so that they can be fully formatted, an OS installed, and all files can be written and read to a pair of SATA drives.  I tried several other adapter cards that were not fully functional, e.g., a RAID drive could be written to, but would not allow an OS to be installed on it.  This is the only one I found that worked 100%.  It was also the card recommended to me by a Chinese vendor who had sold me a different card with only partial compatibility.  I can't guarantee that it works with Windows 7, but I see no reason why it wouldn't.  Hope that helps.

Question 6

Can I use 2 of these on one mobo?  I have one working well on an Asus M2A-VM HDMI mobo but want a 2nd RAID set and only have a PCI slot open.  There are no 4 port PCI RAID cards compatible with Win10.

Accepted Answer

These are really for older PCs that were based on only PCI expansion slots, but if you're successful with one (and you mean that you still have another open PCI slot available), I'd assume that this should work -- since one card can handle two PATA or two SATA HDs in either a RAID 0 or 1 formation. And assuming your have extra slots in your tower for the extra HDs.
They do make external HD enclosures (for use with internal drives) that can handle four or more HDs in a single RAID setup, but that is a much more expensive option.
As to whether the first option will work with Win 10, that I can't answer. I have this card on an old Dell that I'm still using XP on. Some of my best programs don't work well with 7 or 10, so I'm forced to continue using ancient tech.
Sorry I can't give a better answer.

Question 7

I can't find my driver. Where can I get windows 7 driver from? I was not able to find it at SYBA's website.

Accepted Answer

It looks like the last published Windows drivers are for Vista. If you had the driver before, do you recall where you got it? This link:

(search on the card model number on back, newegg won't let me post a link)
gets the drivers.  I have not used this card on Windows 7, but you might try the Vista drivers if you are really stuck. Sometimes those work on 7. It is a VIA chip set. I have assumed you have tried the search for drivers on windows update.  If not try that first. 7 should go there automatically but you need to select the search windows update option. It can be slow so be patient.

Question 8

will it work with apple computers ?

Accepted Answer

I have Windows, and spent considerable time finding the best Via drivers.  To be honest I never even thought to look for an Apple based kernel extension.  Sorry I can't help.

Question 9

Trying to use this card with an IDE DVD-RW drive that quit working after upgrade to Windows 7, and found out this card can read the drive but will not write to it.  Drive reads and writes with a USB-to-IDE adapter, so how do I get this card to write to the drive?

Accepted Answer

Find the Driver for the SYBA SD-VIA-1A25 PCI card, on the VIA web site for Windows 7.  Mine works on Windows 7 Pro, using both SATA ports and the IDE Port for an IDE DVD-RW drive. The CD that came with the SYBA SD-VIA-1A25 PCI Card should have a driver for Windows 7, if it does not, resort to VIA for the driver (yeah, I bought mine second hand, had to resort to VIA's web site).

Question 10

Is this Sata ll compliant and works PCI?
Strictly using for second hard drive (Hitachi 0A39289 SATA )
Does it say it on the packaging of the delivered product?

Accepted Answer

This plugs into a PCI slot. I use it to connect an IDE device since the MB I have does not have any IDE connectors.
It can also be used to connect SATA devices. It is only 1.5 GB not the 3.0 or 6.0 GB sata II and III.

I imagine it is backwards compatible but did not use it to connect SATA.

It works for what it was designed for to allow connecting legacy devices to a modern MB. Or to attach 2 SATA drives for a storage raid.

I hope this helps.

Questions & Answers