Windows 7: Boot Device on Multi-Port SATA Card Changes When Second Drive Enabled

I have a multi-port ESata adapter based on Silicon Image Sil3124 chipset. When I plug in a single drive into port 0, the computer tries to use it as a boot device. Unfortunately, if I plug in a second drive into port 1, 2, or 3 (ports 0 through 3, four ports total) now the drive in port 0 refuses to boot.

What the world clearly needs is an ESata adapter that runs its own BIOS BOOT software, that you can enter before the computer starts any operating system. Inside that software, you could point to the exact device you want to use as the boot device. Back in the good old days of SCSI, EVERY adapter was built that way, even ones without RAID features. How did the world regress so much when it jumped to Sata?

I find RAID adapters that include such BIOS BOOT software, but I cannot locate any Non RAID adapters that do this. What I am really looking for here is a very high end, bootable ESata adapter that can be configured before the OS loads, to simplify selecting a boot device for both Windows and UNIX OS. Does such a thing exist?

I realize you could get a motherboard with ESata support as well, but in my legacy systems I cannot do this, and I need ESata primarily for performance reasons.