The only thing *almost* meeting all your criteria are the ASMedia ASM1061 PCIe cards on Ebay. You're going to have to spend a hell of a lot more money to get an LSI or Intel-powered controller. Contrary to popular belief, the ASM1061 chipset is actually not that bad.

Evert wrote:

The only thing *almost* meeting all your criteria are the ASMedia ASM1061 PCIe cards on Ebay. You're going to have to spend a hell of a lot more money to get an LSI or Intel-powered controller. Contrary to popular belief, the ASM1061 chipset is actually not that bad.

I have no objection to any kind of chipset.I'm ok with Asmedia, SIL, Marwell, or any other. But, this card:

- At least one eSATA port --- has two, OK
- Two internal SATA III ports either supporting RAID 1, and/or supporting optical drives. --- No RAID support, but supports optical drives, OK
- eSATA and internal ports should be used together --- you need to jumper select which to use, only support for 2 ports, Not OK
- Purchase price should be less than 30 USD. --- Cheap, OK

This and similar cards you might find in abundance in ebay is the reason I'm asking for help. Whatever I found, fails for at least one item from the proposed spec list above. 😢

Does your daily rig not have a SATA controller? If so, you might be able to get an eSATA bracket and use the onboard SATA for that, and use a PCIe controller for RAID only.

alexanrs wrote:

Does your daily rig not have a SATA controller? If so, you might be able to get an eSATA bracket and use the onboard SATA for that, and use a PCIe controller for RAID only.

I have a P5Q Premium. It has 6 + 4 SATA II ports. first 6 are the main controller (Intel ICH10R Southbridge) and supports both RAID and optical drives. The last 4 are Asus "DriveXpert" ports, controlled by Silicon Image 5723 chip, supports RAID but no optical drives.

Normally, this is more than enough SATA ports for any sane person but something wrong with SIL 5723. Connecting any drive to them, even just enabling them from the BIOS causes boot time BSODs. If the computer manages to boot and windows starts, there is no problem, PC is rock stable, but coming to this stage generally requires BSODs and restarts during Windows boot time a couple or more times.

I updated the controller firmware, tried different versions of drivers from both Asus and Silicon Image, without any resolution. So I'm being forced to disable them.

The problem is, I have six SATA HDDs which I normally use as 3 sets of RAID1 volumes and two SATA optical drives (DVD RW and BD RW). I already have an Asus U3S6 controller (Marvell 9123 I think), which has two SATA II ports but no RAID or optical drive support.

At the moment, two of my HDDs are not in RAID1, and my eSATA port cables are dangling inside the case. I just wanted to change this.

Can the onboard SIL be configured in IDE compatibility mode? If so, does it cause BSODs then as well?

tayyare wrote:

I have no objection to any kind of chipset.I'm ok with Asmedia, SIL, Marwell, or any other. But, this card: […]
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Evert wrote:

The only thing *almost* meeting all your criteria are the ASMedia ASM1061 PCIe cards on Ebay. You're going to have to spend a hell of a lot more money to get an LSI or Intel-powered controller. Contrary to popular belief, the ASM1061 chipset is actually not that bad.

I have no objection to any kind of chipset.I'm ok with Asmedia, SIL, Marwell, or any other. But, this card:

- At least one eSATA port --- has two, OK
- Two internal SATA III ports either supporting RAID 1, and/or supporting optical drives. --- No RAID support, but supports optical drives, OK
- eSATA and internal ports should be used together --- you need to jumper select which to use, only support for 2 ports, Not OK
- Purchase price should be less than 30 USD. --- Cheap, OK

This and similar cards you might find in abundance in ebay is the reason I'm asking for help. Whatever I found, fails for at least one item from the proposed spec list above. 😢

How many PCIe slots do you have? Maybe you could buy two of those cards (it will still be in your $30 budget) and let one be used for external connections and the other for internal?

Unfortunately, all slots are occupied. Serial/Parallel port adapter in PCI (I need two serial ports), firewire 800 card in PCIe (for a WD external HDD), USB3.0 in PCIe (used for all kind of USB 3.0 things).

Two PCIe slot is occupied by Display card, and I cant use also the one PCI slot besides it for not cutting the fan flow. Asus U3S6 sits In the last PCIe slot which I want to use instead for the card I'm describing.

Depending on how many USB 3.0 ports you need, you might want to look at some USB 3.0/SATA combo card. While I doubt these would be good for using your HDDs, you might want to do some research if they can be used for CDs or eSATA, thus giving you more options.

Take a look at this. An optical drive here (if it supports it), the other on the ASMedia, eSATA on the ASMedia and all HDDs on the Intel ports might be a good solution.

I think, this will do:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/181697079372?_trksid= … K%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

No eSATA ports, but has 4 ports that can be used together so I can connect my front panel eSATA port cable and optical drives to it at the same time. It's not SATA III, but except Asus U3S6, none of my other ports onboard either. Two of the ports are actually converted ATA133 ports, not even SATA II (which is a bit disturbing). Only good thing is, this card is the only card that I come up with which states clearly, it supports optical drives. It's also cheap.

Worth trying I guess...