Posted under Windows
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Tags Driver, eSATA, Tip
This situation is confusing as I now have 3 cards all using Silicon Image drivers.
Also, it appears to be notoriously difficult to find the drivers online – Silicon Image say that they are card vendor specific and don’t offer them. Re the unbadged card below from Tranquil, Tranquil do not offer any drivers for download, and therefore as it is unbadged and Silicon Image don’t offer any either, you are stuck if you lose the driver CD!
Do as follows :-
1/ Startech SATA Express PCI Express 2 port PEXESATA2
For Windows 7, Windows appears to find and install the correct driver, so I did not update it. It appears to be the same as the PEXESATA2 driver below.
Otherwise, use the PEXESATA2.zip driver. The “SATA Express_2Port” driver on the Silicon Image 3-ALL-34A drivers CD appears to be the same version so should work as well. This appears to be a non-RAID device. To allow safe device removal, also install HOTSWAP! for this device, as the driver does not enable windows safe removal. (32 or 64 bit version as appropriate). With the device connected, check the properties pages for both the disk device and the storage controller, and ensure that write caching is turned on.
2/ Startech 2 Port Cardbus eSATA – CBESAT2
Use the driver under “Startech 2 port Cardbus Card” – this folder contains a copy of the CD sent with the card. The driver required is under subdirectory:-
NON-RAID\3512. This driver supports windows safe removal so you do not need to install HOTSWAP!. With the device connected to a disk, check the “Policies” tab on the device manager properties page for the disk, and check that ‘optimised for performance’ is selected to enable write caching.
3/ Tranquil unbadged 4 port PCI card.
This card appears to support RAID (although I don’t use it)
The driver used is the “SATA RAID_4Port” driver under the 3-ALL-34A driver CD
To allow safe device removal, also install HOTSWAP! for this device, as the driver does not enable windows safe removal. (32 or 64 bit version as appropriate). With the device connected, check the properties pages for both the disk device and the storage controller, and ensure that write caching is turned on. As I installed this a while back, I can’t recall if I had to change the setting manually after I installed the driver.
Note that the 3-ALL-34A driver CD seems to be a point upgrade on the 3-ALL-33A one. These CDs came with the “Startech SATA Express PCI Express 2 Port” card and the unbadged Tranquil “SATA RAID_4Port” card. I cannot remember which came with which, but using the later one in all cases should be correct.