Asus Z170-a and PCI-E SATA III extension card

[grapkulec]

Hi,

 

Asus Z170-a has only 6 sata III sockets and I found myself having a need for 4 HDDs & at least 3 SSDs + DVD/CD burner so that's 8 sata connections.

I thought 'no biggie, I'll buy pci extension card with 2 more sata connections and I'm fine' but either I got some weird card and this mobo doesn't like it or I am too dumb to configure it correctly.

 

This is card I bought: http://www.delock.com/produkte/G_89299/merkmale.html

 

I plugged it into second pci-e x16 slot, connected sata cable to my dvd drive and powered up the machine.

Card got detected and it even detected dvd drive correctly but then Asus logo showed up with usual "press Del or F2 to enter setup" message and it stayed there. After few minutes I realized it definitely doesn't do anything so I pressed reset button. This time card was also detected but it didn't show up dvd drive. In fact cursor just kept blinking and nothing happened so after few minutes I hit Power button and started system again. And same scenario repeated.

 

I switched card to 3rd pci-e x16 slot thinking that maybe 2nd one got some issues or sth. But same thing were happening.

I found setting in Bios that allowed setting speed of 3rd pci slot from Auto to x4 (my card is x4 so that seemed ok) but side effect of this is that 2 onboard sata sockets are getting disabled by this which is kind of pointless.

 

So now my questions are:

- is it my extension card that is weird and I should maybe try another one?

- is there any setting in bios of my mobo that would make this work?

 

I would be grateful for any hints you could throw my way.

[Droidbot]

Is it going past the BIOS into Windows in any way or is it stuck in the BIOS? 

[grapkulec]

When I start computer with power button and there's nothing connected to the card it says "no devices detected" and then it shows Asus logo and few seconds later it starts booting my Win7. But when there's anything connected to the card it just hangs on Asus logo. And if I just reset it (by reset button or by Restart command from Windows) and there's drive connected to the card it just hangs at detecting devices.

 

Card itself seems to be working fine because I started up without dvd connected, waited for system to successfully boot up into Win7 and then I plugged in sata cable into card's socket. And voila, my dvd drive showed up in windows as normal, I could read data from dvd and I even tested burning a disc, all worked fine.

 

EDIT:

 

My mobo is running latest BIOS v1702, I guess I should mention it.

[grapkulec]

Sorry for self-bump but is it really that nobody uses extra sata pci cards with this mobo?