StarTech.com 2 Port PCI Express SATA 6 Gbps eSATA Controller Card - Dual Port PCIe SATA III Card - 2 Int/2 Ext - SATA III 6Gbps (PEXESAT322I)

I have this low power Mini ITX mobo with 4 SATA ports on it. All of them are in use on the FreeNAS. I was using the suggested setup of mirrored USB drives. 2 little Sandisk Cruisers. After about a year one of them failed. I replaced it then a few months later the other one failed. I don't think they are bad devices, they just aren't rated for 24/7 use.Anyway I needed another solution. I had a single PCI-e slot to work with. I picked up some cheapo M.2 "controller" not realizing it needed SATA cables to work. Oops. So I did some more digging and found this. I didn't need the speed of NVMe. I mean this system was running off 2 USB sticks just fine. Given how cheap SATA controllers are I felt this was a little expensive. I mean I could get a 2 port PCIe SATA controller for like $12 USD. Anyway I've worked with StarTech stuff before and it's always seemed to be good quality. After some reading it looked like the controller chip on this would be happy to play with FreeNAS.I installed this 32GB Trancend SATA M.2 drive, installed the card in the machine and re-installed FreeNAS. Imported my 2 mirrored arrays, tweaked some settings, let it reboot like 6 times as I changed things and it did it's import process, make sure all my imported settings worked, then shut it down, installed the other M.2 drive, booted back up, setup the boot drive mirror and boom, perfection. No more USD drives hanging out of the back and it works great.Final thoughts. I think for the money, it's worth it. There are more expensive solutions out there but the instructions are great and it seems well made. I waited 4 months before I wrote this review. Card length is a consideration as well. My FreeNAS machine is in a Fractal Design Node 304. The case itself has room, But there are a lot of power supply and SATA cables running around in there. It was a little tight.Warning: Some BIOS's don't like to boot off PCIe devices. Try and do some research before buying this. If you happen to have a cheapo PCIe SATA controller laying around. Put a bootable drive on it, even a CD-ROM/DVD and see if it boots. Generally if you're in the BIOS and you can see it as a boot option, you're golden. All that said, if you're reading this review and considering buying one of these, you probably know what you're doing.Hope this was helpful.

I used this to hook up two external SATA drive enclosures to my new computer. The card fit perfectly in my computer. I installed it and plugged in my drives and started up my machine. I then installed the latest driver from the startech.com site (nice site, BTW). Some of my drives were not recognized. I had to go into Windows Disk Management, where they were listed as Foreign Disks. Once they were "imported" Windows read the disks just fine.Everything seemed to work fine. But then, after working on the computer for about 15 minutes, got a blue screen of death. The error shown as DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE. After rebooting, got another BSOD, and another, and another. Every 15 minutes or so. This on a brand new computer.So I figured it must have something to do with the card since that was the only thing I had changed about the computer. I decided to walk it backwards one step at a time. I didn't want to uninstall the whole thing and start all over. So I went to the driver in Device Manger and just disabled it, then rebooted. Hmm, no more BSOD! What happens if I re-enable the driver now. Will the BSOD come back? It did not. So it seems like disable/enable the driver solved the issue.In retrospect, I should have installed the card, turned on the computer, installed the driver, then reboot. Then, shut down the computer, hook up the drives, and turn the computer on. I did these two steps as one. I highly recommend that you take it one small step at a time. Easier to sleuth problems that way. Other than that, this card has worked perfectly.

Works great and compatible

Here's the thing. This product is supposed to be compatible with Windows. And it is, just not the way it should be. Port multiplier which is the main reason I imagine most people by this product is flawed in Windows 10 and 11. By flawed meaning several of the drives refused to show. I've tried every configuration you can think of in the drives are just not present.And I know it's not the card It's the driver for Windows. That's right The driver is flawedHow do I know it's the driver for windows?Because when the computer boots up all drives show.I have mine configured to use one external port, one internal port.After reading I came to learn that when it comes to the esada each side supports and eight drive Bay, eachThe external port is for an 8-Bay eSATA enclosure.The internal is for a internal drive.However and oddly enoughThe operating system that it claims to not support is the one operating system that port multiplier operates perfectly in, in fact all features of the device operate perfectly in this operating system and that operating system is Linux.That's right in Linux the driver is installed automatically no need for the CD or nothing additionally all drives in my media Sonic 8 Bay enclosure loads right up via eSata and internal.No fuss no muss. So perhaps StarTech needs to update their data to reflect that this card is indeed proper for Linux.They may not support it for Linux, But it works so perfectly What support does it need for Linux.I am using mine to power a plex media server, and might I say it runs solid as a rock in Linux that is

Used this card to connect my PC to a 4 place external HD enclosure that I originally connected through a USB connection. Now the external HDs work like internal HDs. No lag time.I originally had some problems with the card, due to my own lack of understanding of PCs, but I contacted the manufacturer of the card. They responded quickly and helped me fix my mistake and things are working like I hoped they would.