Is it possible in Ghost 2003 to access a hard drive that is connected to an E-SATA card, such as a PCI/PCI-E/ExpressCard SATA card?

If it is possible, do I need any special drivers to make it work?

Does it matter what chipset the E-SATA card has? I have seen that many cards use the Silicon Image Sil3132 chipset. Does this chipset work with Ghost 2003?

/Kollo

@ kollo


Quote:

Is it possible in Ghost 2003 to access a hard drive that is connected to an E-SATA card, such as a PCI/PCI-E/ExpressCard SATA card?

Maybe:

You need Ghost 2003 build .793 to use SATA and -FNI, here's how.

SATA HDD's and Ghost!

Re: Bootable cd without floppy

Switches: Drive detection

Thank you for your answer NightOwl. I haven't got any E-SATA card yet so I cannot test if it works with various switches.

I already have SATA and E-SATA working with the built-in SATA controller in my computer which is a brand new Dell Latitude E6400 laptop. However, because of problems with running my DVD unit in native SATA (ACHI) mode, I consider switching the built-in controller in my computer to IDE-compatible mode and that will disable the E-SATA port.

Unfortunately, the E-SATA port on my computer is the only external port that I have got working with Ghost 2003. The USB controller doesn't seem to be supported by Ghost 2003 and I have no Firewire drive to test the Firewire port with.

So I was thinking that maybe it would be possible to buy an E-SATA card (Express Card) and connect the external hard drive to that card when running Ghost 2003. But before buying an E-SATA card it would be good to have an indication that it would actually work in Ghost 2003.

Has anyone got an E-SATA card working in Ghost 2003?

Kollo

Kollo,

I have a Dell 9150 desktop with a Lacie PCI Express card (Silicon Image Sil3132 chipset). BIOS Base 7405. Drivers 1.0.22.0

Ghost 2003 sees the eSATA HD and I can write images to the HD.

No switches were used.

Brian wrote on Nov 15^th, 2008 at 1:29pm:

Kollo, I have a Dell 9150 desktop with a Lacie PCI Express card (Silicon Image Sil3132 chipset). BIOS Base 7405. Drivers 1.0.22.0 Ghost 2003 sees the eSATA HD and I can write images to the HD. No switches were used.

Good news! Thank you for the information.

There are E-SATA ExpressCard cards with Sil3132 available for a reasonable cost there I live. I think I will purchase a card a give it a try.

When you say "Drivers 1.0.22.0", do you mean the Windows drivers or do you use these drivers in the Ghost 2003 DOS mode?

Kollo

Windows drivers.

http://www.siimage.com/support/supportsearchresults.aspx?pid=32&cid=3&ctid=2&osid=4&;

My first SATA hard drive was run from a PCI SATA controller card.

I had no problems running Ghost 2003, without any special drivers or switches.

Good Luck,
The Shadow  8-)

TheShadow:
Thank you for the information. Do you know what type of controller was on your PCI SATA controller card? Silicon Image, JMicron or something else?

I actually went by the local electronics store today and picked up a JMicron JMB360 based ExpressCard SATA card. I got a money-back-guarantee if it wouldn't work so I thought let's give it a try. It didn't work. A disk connected to this card wasn't visible to Ghost 2003 at all.

I have a JMicron based controller in my desktop computer and it works with Ghost but that controller is also visible in BIOS and that is a different thing than using an ExpressCard card. It could also be that the ExpressCard card only had one SATA port and no Option Rom visible at boot time.

I will return the card and probably get a Sil3132 based card instead. Or I will use the built-in E-SATA controller in my laptop and hope the SATA AHCI DVD drive problems get solved.

Kollo

All the controller cards I've ever used, whether IDE or SATA have the Silicon Image chipset on them.

Just in general, FYI, many people get into trouble with expecting hard drives to be seen by Ghost or some other program when in fact the HD has never been partitioned and/or formatted.
Generally, only a mobo bios will see a totally blank HD.

The very first thing I do with every new HD I get is to partition and format it.
That process assures that the drive is good and it makes it a lot more visible to Ghost and other software, OS's , etc.

Just a thought...........

Happy Holidays!
The Shadow  8-)

I have now tried three different ExpressCard E-SATA cards and none of them worked with Ghost 2003. So either the cards are not compatible with Ghost 2003 or my laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) doesn't support ExpressCard E-SATA cards in BIOS/DOS mode.

Actually I think it is the laptop that is the problem. The last card I tried is an ExpressCard RAID card that should display an Option ROM page at boot time but nothing is displayed. I think this could be because the computer is not initializing ExpressCard devices at boot time. As soon as Windows starts loading the LED on the card is lit and I guess the card is not initialized until then.

Before giving up on this I just want to ask if there is any chance of finding an ExpressCard E-SATA DOS driver that will initialize the card for use in Ghost?

Otherwise I will use the Panasonic USB 2.0 driver. Thankfully this driver works with the USB controller in my computer and it also has decent speed. The USB 2.0 driver supplied with Ghost 2003 doesn't work.

For reference, these are the ExpressCard E-SATA cards I have tried that didn't work in DOS on Dell Latitude E6400:

Sunix ECSA14. Chipset: JMicron JMB360 in non-RAID mode.
Sunix ECSA24. Chipset: Sil3132 in non-RAID mode.
AVLAB 1005-0030-000AX. Chipset: Sil3132 in RAID mode.

/Kollo

I've missed something important here.

How do you put a PCI card in a laptop?

When a SATA controller card, (PCI Card) is installed in a standard desktop computer, the bios on the card supplements the bios on the motherboard, so that they work as one.

But if you're plugging something into the PCMCIA slot on a laptop, that's a whole different bucket of worms.

A little clarity, please.... :-/

Happy Holidays!
The Shadow  8-)

Well, I haven't tried to put a PCI card in my laptop. That would be difficult to fit in. :)

The E-SATA cards I have tried are of ExpressCard type. See http://www.expresscard.org/ for more information. ExpressCard is like a PCMCIA card connected to the PCI-Express bus of the laptop while an old PCMCIA/Card Bus card is connected to the PCI bus.

A few laptop models have docking stations where you can fit an PCI or PCI-Express Card but that is another story.

Kollo

I doubt that I would take that route to use a SATA drive on a Laptop.
I'd probably just put the drive in a SATA to USB external drive enclosure and run it from there.  Probably. :-/

When you don't do the required thing, and tell us all about your system when you start out, we're left doing a lot of guessing and making a lot of erroneous assumptions and thusly wasting a lot of valuable time.

Good luck,
Shadow  8-)

Ok, but I have written that I will try out an ExpressCard E-SATA card in almost every post in this thread. I hope I haven't wasted too much of your valuable time. I think the information in this thread can be of great use for people that want to know what kind of SATA cards will work with Ghost 2003.

That I left out the word ExpressCard in the first post was intentional, since I wanted to know if people had got any type of plug-in SATA card working with Ghost. I figured that very few people had tried ExpressCard and would answer. So first I wanted to know if there was any chance at all getting a SATA plug-in card to work. If that wouldn't work there would probably be no chance of getting an ExpressCard SATA card to work either.

Once again I am sorry if I wasn't specific enough in my question.

Kollo

Duh!  What I was getting at is that you never bothered to tell us that you were working with a laptop...make, model, OS, etc.

I seriously doubt that I'm the only one alive that just assumed that you were on a desktop computer like we are.

But when you just take off talking about some card, and don't even say what kind of a computer you're using, it just leaves a lot of folks scratching their heads.  Get it?

Sorry if asking you for what every internet forum asks you for bothered you.
Better luck next time.

Please read the "Before you post" sticky next time.

Happy Holidays Everyone!
8-)