Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Correct A-331/A-341 PCIe to SATA Jumper Settings

PCI Express to Serial ATA (eSATA II/300)Surprisingly, the instruction booklet that accompanies the A-331/A-341 PCIe to SATA devices causes some confusion among a very small segment of end users in terms of jumper settings for SATA port selection.

Here is the text and images from the booklet:


Note: There are four SATA ports in PCIe SATA II 300 2-Channel RAID Card. We named these ports A to D. Ports A & B are external SATA ports and C & D are internal SATA ports. By changing the jumper setting on Encore SATA2 RAID PCIe Card that allows you to select between external and internal ports to use. By default, Port C and D are working.





Reading the instructions, a few things stand out. First off, the instructions state that Ports C and D are the default settings, and hence the internal SATA ports are the out of the box configuration. To change a port, the entire bank grouping must be relocated (this is where most people are confused), in other words all jumpers from either bank (groups of four J1-J4, or J5-J8) need be in the same position (ie. all 1-2 OR all 2-3).

To simplify this by providing the most obvious example. To switch from the default settings of both internal ports to both the external ports, one would move all the jumpers to position 1-2 closed. In other words, move every jumper to the opposite position they are already set at!

Remember, A and C are mutually exclusive, as are B and D. Hence, a mixed one internal port and one external port configuration can only consist of A and D, OR B and C.

PCI Express to Serial ATA (eSATA II/300) 2/2 Port Host Adapters