asus crosshair ii and blue ray drive but all red sata ports are full help.

[Rock N Roll Rebel]

all my red sata ports are full with ssd and three hdd's. can i use one of the black sata ports for one of the hdd's or the blue ray drive? i do have ahci enabled in the bios.

 

[xBruce88x]

microcenter has a sata to ide adaptor that plugs into an ide port and gives you 2 sata ports. it will be limited to ATA133 (133MB/sec) i think. or w/e speed of your ide controller. it should be enough for bluray though.

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0308541

should make it easier to deal with as far as drivers and what not also, and easier to use ur cd rom for boot.

or you can go with a controller card via pci or pci-e

edit: you should be able to use that black port just fine for a cd drive. i'm guessing its a different controller anyway. also, could you link me your board... the one i found has blue sata ports.

and if ahci is not on, don't turn it on unless you want to re-install windows.

 

[Rock N Roll Rebel]

your rite my bad they are blue instead of red. the ide port is in use so ill have to try the black sata i just don't want to buy a blue ray intell i know that it works.

 

[xBruce88x]

so all 6 are used up? i didn't see any black ones either. and i reread ur OP, i thought you were asking if you needed ahci turned on, but since you already have it on leave it that way.

if you have a free port it should work fine with a bluray drive. if there are no more sata ports to be found, you can try that adapter I linked.

just to be sure... this is your motherboard? http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM2Plus/Crosshair_II_Formula/#specifications

edit: checking manual just to be sure...

I've read on some sites that optical drives don't like AHCI mode.

according to the manual, only ports 1-4 can do ide mode, 5 and 6 are raid/ahci ONLY. you may have to relocate your SSD and another drive to the last 2 ports, then set the others to ide mode so you can use the optical drive. the other hard drives will still perform well in ide mode. I don't think it'll mess with your windows install. you'll have to make sure the boot drive is set in bios in the boot menus. i guess if you want to keep the other drives in ahci then you'll need an adapter for the optical drive, or for the other drives. i'm not 100% sure about this though, just going by what i've read on various sites and the motherboard manual (.pdf file)

 

[Rock N Roll Rebel]

in the Manuel it said the the 4 blue sata ports are for normal sata 2 use and the two black one are for raid or ahci i have ahci enabled in the bios but i red the there has to be a driver for it to in windows but im not sure im confused

 

[xBruce88x]

if you've been running in ahci mode the whole time then the drivers were probably loaded when the OS was installed

 

[Rock N Roll Rebel]

ok ill try buying a blue ray drive and see if it works thanks for your help here is a link to the board
Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, L...

 

[xBruce88x]

after zooming in it looks like the black ports are the 5 and 6, which according to their online manual is ahci/raid only. http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM2Plus/Crosshair_II_Formula/#download

 

[Rock N Roll Rebel]

does that mean i cant use them for normal use if ahci is enabled

 

[xBruce88x]

the black ones can't do reg. mode regardless. they are strictly raid/ahci

 

[Rock N Roll Rebel]

bummer i have all the rest of my ports full

 

[xBruce88x]

you should be able to move your OS drive and another to the black ports, and set the rest to standard IDE mode. this way your os doesn't get confused... only it may say "new hardware found" for 2 of the drives as it loads them in ide mode or w/e. its only when the os drive gets changed that windows freaks out (ide to ahci and back). still... just in case... any important info on the ssd i'd back up to one of the larger drives just in case. (i'm assuming the black ports are on the same controller)

 

[Rock N Roll Rebel]

can i do that with out using raid?