Question 1

Are the USB ports 2.0 or 3.0?

Accepted Answer

I have this card and there are no USB ports on this card. The card has to internal SATA 6 gb ports and two external eSATA ports. The internal SATA ports are downward compatible .

Question 2

Any problems in Windows 10?

Accepted Answer

With the Fall 2017 version of WIN 10 my system would not boot when an internal drive was attached to this card, even though it was booting from another drive. Installing the win 10 driver from the web site fixed this problem. I'm now running fine with 5 esata drive and 1 internal drive attached.

Question 3

Does this include a short mounting plate for installation into less than full height slots?

Accepted Answer

Mine did not come with the low profile bracket. Have had no issues with it. Seen fine in windows 7 and 8 along with linux without any driver issues.

Question 4

Does this card work with Windows (64 bit) or have any issues?

Accepted Answer

I was able to use this product before upgrading to Windows10 from W7 and I can say that I had no serious problems with it working on my 64bit OS with either of these versions.

Question 5

Does this card work with Windows 8.1?

Accepted Answer

I have had no issues with it in Windows 8.1 but I did not do anything extra for drivers. The only thing I did notice was the SATA6 speed for a SSD was not up to what it should be on this card. That is probably a driver issue or something. It was about half the speed compaired to the SATA6 motherboard connections. The reason I concluded that it is a driver issue in W8.1 is in Linux it runs at full speed.

Question 6

Will this work with vSphere ESXI 6.0?

Accepted Answer

I don't see why not. Its supported by both Windows and LInux and has Port Multiplier support. I can't speak to Raid, but I do use it with LVM.

Question 7

Can more than 1 port be port-multiplier enabled at once? eg. plugging in (2) 5-Drive external drive enclosures and seeing all 10 drives at once?

Accepted Answer

A Serial ATA port multiplier is a unidirectional splitting device. While it allows one equipped port to connect up to 15 disks, the bandwidth available is limited to the bandwidth of the link to the controller, as of 2012 1.5, 3, or 6 Gbit/s.[3] While the controller is aware that there are multiple drives connected, the service is transparent to the disks attached. Because they believe they are communicating directly with the controller, any drive that holds to the SATA standard can be connected to a port multiplier. There are two ways port multipliers can be driven:

The above information is from: Wikipedia
Search under "Port Multiplier"

According to definition, If your multi drive device provides its own routing on the buss of the controller  embedded in it, then you may have up to 15 devices on each SATA connector. The Specifications for the VANTEC 2 Channel 4 Port SATA Host Card, read "Multiplier  Support Capable". The Multiplier is within your disk array box and the VANTEC Card will support that function. I bought my VANTEC for the use of a 5.25 in. Drive bay which has both a 2.5 and 3.5 removable hard-drive enclosure. It works well as my File History backup drive, Intel 180gb SSD, and also for the System Image Backup Drive on a 1Tb, WD Black. That is what the use of my VANTEC  SATA Card is for on my system. Remember that the option is there for both internal and eSATA interface by adjusting the jumpers on the VANTEC SATA Interface Card. Hope this information helps you and good luck with your project.

Question 8

Does this card support 4 devices at once, or only 2? It has jumper settings that require you to choose "Port 1" (eSATA) OR "Port 1A" (internal SATA) and another set requiring you to choose "Port 2" (eSATA) OR "Port 2A" (internal SATA). If all 4 ports are active, why all the jumper settings? And if not, isn't the description "4 ports" inaccurate?

Accepted Answer

You are correct in your assumption that only two devices can be active at the same time, hence the '2 channel' in the description, even though there are '4 ports' in total.

Question 9

Can I use 1 esata port and 1 internal sata port, or do both channel need to be directed to esata or sata?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can set the card to output to 1 esata and 1 internal sata, or both esata, or both internal sata. I have one computer that has a card setup just like the way you are asking about. The external drive is a 3 gb/s drive and the internal one is a 6 gb/s drive, I have no slow downs when utilizing both drives. I do not know if one would experience slower communication with a drive if both were 6 gb/s drives, I do not think so since the card is PCIe 2.0 x 1 lane which allows a maximum bandwidth of 500 MB/s. I hope that this helps.

Question 10

I want to use this to upgrade my optical drives from IDE to Sata as my mobo (ASUS  P5W DH Deluxe) running XP, has too few sata connections.  The question is, can the new optical drives via this card be configured as boot drives?

Accepted Answer

Although I've never tried it, I suspect it should work. But a better solution would be to copy the bootable media to an iso image and write it to a thumb/fash drive. Booting from a flash drive is multiple times faster.

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