Does the computer load a special windows driver during boot? I am running Win 7 64 bit. I want to add SATA 3 ports but without having the card have to
850636
The card will work without special drivers. However once booted and installed you need to load the special drivers. With just the generic Windows drivers I could not access all of the SATA ports on both the card and motherboard. Once I installed the special drivers everything works great.
850637
I left my sad attached to the SATA II port, installed the IO Crest card, and then started up windows 7...it detected the card and I installed the drivers. Shut down the system and moved my SSD to the SATAIII port. When rebooting go into the bios and double check that your boot drive is still correctly set. Mine changed, probably because I have multiple drives. After making sure the correct drive is set as the boot drive, win7 came up fine.
850638
I'm using Win 7 G4 bit also. And Yes, I needed to load special drivers, for configure the disk for boot I did the following: 1) Create a new windows installation but just for load the drives that the card's cd have. You can see the drive but can't use it. Reset.2) Create again a new windows installation. Select the new drive, format it and use it.
1612340
I have rev 1.1 and am running with WIN8. I just had 2 SATA ports go bad but Gigabyte was excellent doing fix with very quick turnaround.
1234776
the SATA port is required to plug into a empty mother board SATA plug for this card to work and come's with a burned disk with just a random 3.0 controller's this card is vary cheap ive been building custom PC's for about 12-14 years and i coundent even get it to work with esata or USB 3.0 i recommend this kind of setup with your rig but not this Generic Combo spend the money to buy a better one that runs out of the PCI express 1X its plenty fast so there's no reason to loss a mother board sata when your trying to expand your PC i Have 8 sata's and Esata im using all of them for my gaming rig & media server so i wasn't able to use this card
780823
Yes, but you really need to know what you're doing as far as drivers go to get everything set up properly. I have mine running Windows 7. It can be done, it just takes a little extra work. Also, you need to disable secure-boot from within the bios before you begin anything at all
700393
I am only using the USB3 function of the card. I planned to use the SATA III port for possible future expansion. The set up I use is one USB3 port going to a Seagate 2 TB expansion hard drive (for backup and system images) and the other port to a USB3 hub. I chose this card because of the dual functionality and price.
404779
You have to supply power to the card to be able to use the sata. It's just the normal 4 pin Molex power connector that is already in your computer. The same connector that powers your drives etc. There is the Jack on the card that is the same as on all other devices in your computer and you just have to plug power there and the card is powered. Also there is a plug on the card that gives you 2 usb 3.0 internal ports and you can find the cable you need cheaply that plugs into the plug on the card and gives you the 2 ports that you can run the cable thru your computer to the front to give you 2 usb 3.0 ports in the front of your computer. So in total you can have 2 usb 3.0 in back and 2 in front and esata in back and sata internally. Hope that helps, but it's a lot easier to see when you have the card in your hands, but this card was perfect for my older computer that has no usb 3.0 or sata or esata. This card gives you a lot of bang for the buck.
200490
Yes I am using this as my Windows 8.1 boot drive. I was able to do a clean install of Windows 8.1 without having to do anything special. However to use both of the SATA ports on this card plus the 4 SATA ports on my motherboard I had to load the specific drivers for the card, plus the motherboard drivers. I checked the date and version of the drivers on the disk, they are the same as the ones on the website.
234948
Just like everyone else is saying. Make sure you're comp is SATA III and you can find that out by lookin on your Motherboard, or the box it came with or an internet search
546406
The SATA port is only an extension of your motherboard ports. You must connect a SATA data cable from the motherboard to the card. I connected the power cable also, but I don't think this is require for the cards external eSATA to function. I have been unsuccessful in install the drivers for the USB 3.0 ports, so mine don't work. I am also using Windows 7 64-bit. Jeff
152371
Nope. Msi has a separate bios for Win7 though. I go back and forth all of the time. Just be sure to flash the proper BIOS before installing. You can do this from inside of the BIOS. With that said, for 4.99, you can get start8 which makes it work almost exactly like Win7 with better support for the latest technology (usb3, ssd, etc.)
1234775
If you installed the SSD Internal and you plan on using Windows on it, you have to connect it to the motherboard Sata 3 connector, and if you don't have a Sata 3 connector on the motherboard you have to connect it to the card external (e-sata) as a data drive!.
1989336
It does not. It is not even sata compatible. It connects into use port on main board
689937
I don't know yet. The list of drivers, by Windows 7, only lists an ATA driver. Have not had the cover off (I am disabled). My understanding is that ATA drives have ribbon cable and SATA have a 'cable' cable.
1394426
My was working with Windows 7 before it broke. Does it work with other operating systems? If not, then you have a bad unit.You shouldn't need special drivers for Windows 7.
405080
Read my past comments. The usb 3.0 is not reliable and devices simply stop working at times. PCI-E cards are sometines not detected, so 7 comes up without my add-on usb card periodically. That's why I say, the board is ok, but run win8, not 7. What z77 did you show me? This thread is connected to a specific board the GA-Z77X-UD3H. Are we on the same page?
1317269
you need to get the SATA cable they are very cheap your unit should have come with one but they are only 2 or 3 dollars
913660
No worries just ensure that you motherboard has the correct port PCI-e x1 (desktops only, diagram here: http://imgsrv.worldstart.com/images/ct-images/2013/04/mb.jpg), then you simply slot the card into the port, it comes with a couple of SATA data connection cables so you only need to make sure your PSU has sata power connectors available depending on the number of drives you wish to connect (they look like this: http://sharpsblogorama.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/sata-hard-drive-power-cable-connector.jpg) . Hope this answers your question, let me know if you have any further queries or are stuck.