SATA add-in card displays my hard Disk as SCSI

loninappleton · 15 Mar 2016

I have a Startech brand PCI add-in card to get some extra SATA ports on my old Biostar MCP 6PB M2+ board.

In Disk Manager an Hitachi drive attached to the card shows up as a SCSI device.

However my backup software doesn't see it (old copy of Norton Ghost on CD) and the POST operations do not show it in the BIOS. Win7 reports that no driver updates are needed for the Hitachi on the Startech card.

It's very confusing. A new motherboard is due for me but this problem solved would extend the use of the Biostar. Why would the Win7 see the device but nothing else?

Mellon Head · 15 Mar 2016

I can maybe answer this question...

An add on SATA card makes the drives attached to it look like SCSI because they are accessed through a driver in Windows. That's the same reason that BIOS doesn't see the drive. It's accessed through the card by a driver in Windows, and therefore the drive can't be seen in BIOS. The PCI card isolates the drive from BIOS.

As for your older backup software and no drivers, that is probably due to the age of the backup software and its inability to work with the card driver.

I hope that made sense. I have a similar card and the same experience with it. It's nothing to worry about, though the backup software would be a problem. I use Windows backup to my server which has the card and it works just fine.

loninappleton · 16 Mar 2016

Thanks for answering. For as long as I've dealt with the Startech card I may have overlooked the appellation of SCSI previously-- just didn't see it.

My setup is small-- a home network with 2 PCs.

Macrium is often mentioned as a backup solution on SevenForums. Is this a solution to the card problem to do simple things like cloning the drive? I've seen the Macrium Quick Start but cloning seems way down the list of options. The result is I start with it making Rescue Disks and never get past it.

In the past I have had bad experiences with Linux derivatives like Clonezilla.
They are not well- tested or understood by the novice (to backup solutions) user. Another alternative I've seen but am wary about is HDD Guru Raw Copy Tool.

Today I will do what I can to get the Macrium Free program (rather than the Rescue Disk-- this seems to be a difficult distinction in the Macrium world of description.)

My ideal solution would be to run a simple clone job from an ISO file on the removable media. I'm not using any form of thumb drive for this but merely the DVD/CD drive to run the old Ghost.

ThrashZone · 16 Mar 2016

Hi,
What do you not understand about creating the Macrium Reflect recovery cd or flash drive media ?
All I can say is you need it to restore a system image of the c drive and it's system reserved partition
Without it you can not.

That's why Reflect pops up after first starting the program for you to create it.
Blank cd-r is all it takes or a 1gb flash drive will work too the file it's self is only 500mb.

loninappleton · 16 Mar 2016

I have the reflect Recovery disk made-- at least one maybe two.

The Raw Copy program I tried today-- that's a no go. Once again it's not a bootable ISO
disk. It must be that Linux and it's shells (Acronis I think is another) are the only ones that can legitimately load from cd.

The question at hand is: which of the backup programs can see this card that shows SCSI devices.

I know I said I'd reinstall Macrium, the exe. Got tied up with other things today.

ThrashZone · 16 Mar 2016

Hi,
You might review the bios option for pci-e
Otherwise disconnect the cd/dvd burner connection and get a sata to esata connection for the external enclosure.

AddRAM · 17 Mar 2016

Did you even try windows imaging yet ?

Are you doing backups or making images ?

And what are you concerned with cloning for ?

Also, if I may ask, why are you even using backup software, just do it manually.

I would never trust a backup program. Copy, paste, validate.

loninappleton · 17 Mar 2016

I did successfully make an image to a scratch drive with the Windows PE routine.
Did not try to restore it yet.

Macrium (now installed) does not show the PCI/SATA drive .

Would this BIOS tweak you suggest allow the Macrium to see it? I'll take a look at
the PCI-e options. Is it under PnP accessories or some such?
Looking at my motherboard diagram, the Startech SATA card is on the only PCI slot
the board has. There is a PCI-Express slot on the board.