Denise

I found a solution to this problem but it's not ideal. I kept the IO Crest 8-port SATA III PCIe 2.0 x2 Controller Card Green, SI-PEX40071 and connected 4 hard drives to it. I also bought a Semlos 4 Ports PCI Sata Internal Raid Controller Card Sil3114 Chipset 013577 and seated it into one of the PCI slots on my motherboard and connected 3 hard drives and the DVD drive to it. Those hard drives are a lot slower but all of my hard drives are connected now and available for use.

Thanks, everybody, for all your help and suggestions, much appreciated. If I ever come up with a solution or if I never come up with a solution, I'll let you know.

I read that the x16 slots are only for video cards here: I have only one x16 slot and I need it for the video card. When I was running XP x64, I had an adapter card connected to the PCIE 2.0 port and it worked well. It was a "HighPoint RocketRAID 2320 PCI Express (x8 non-RAID) x4 SATA II RAID Card RAID 0/1/5/10/50 JBOD." It doesn't work with Windows 10, though. I tried the card in the 8x slot and it wouldn't work in that slot either. My computer wouldn't boot to Windows when I connected a hard drive to it. Also, when it was in that slot, I lost my internet connection. I had to shut down, remove the card, boot up and I had internet connection again. It makes no sense but that's what happened. I can't return any of the parts I bought. I've had them for over 30 days. Hindsight is perfect. I now know that I should have left my system the way it was and just bought a laptop for the internet. Do you think that any PCIE adapter card that I buy will have the same problem with my motherboard and Windows 10? Do you know of one that will work?

The 16x slot is only for video cards. I just tried the 8x slot and it did the same thing, plus my network connection was lost until I shut down, removed the card, and booted back up. I don't know why it did that.

Hi, Thanks for responding. In BIOS, AHCI is selected. In Device Manager > IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers > Standard SATA AHCI Controllers, it says that the best drivers for your device are already installed. The adapter card isn't listed in Device Manager. I have the card seated in the PCIeX4 slot of my motherboard. I contacted Gigabyte Support Forum but they never responded. I just spent about $800.00 upgrading this pc, including buying Windows 10. I can't afford to put anymore money into it right now. Can you suggest an adapter card that will work with my motherboard? A HighPoint RocketRAID 2320 v 1.04 PCI Express x8 adapter card worked with this motherboard but it wasn't compatible with Windows 10 so I need one that's compatible with both. No drivers are supposed to be needed for this card but I followed the link you gave me and downloaded driver SI-PEX40071. I'll set a restore point and install it and see if it helps. Thanks. EDIT: I unzipped SI-PEX40071. It says at the website that it's for Windows 7, 8, 10 but the options it offers is for 1. Widows 2003_XP and 2. Windows Vista_2008_7_8. It doesn't contain a driver for Windows 10.

For the past 9 years, I've been using the GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DQ6 motherboard and a HighPoint RocketRAID 2320 v 1.04 PCI Express x8 controller card. I had 6 hard drives connected to the motherboard and 6 hard drives connected to the controller card, JBOD, running Windows XP x64. The controller card worked well. Windows XP x64 was getting too obsolete so I switched to Windows 10 and a bought a new controller card, a IO Crest 8-port SATA III PCIe 2.0 x2 Controller Card Green, SI-PEX40071. For some reason, only 4 hard drives connected to the controller card would show up. I thought it was faulty so I RMA'd it and the new one did the same thing. Thinking that there might be a compatibility issue, I bought a different one, an Ableconn PEX10-SAT 10 Port SATA 6G PCI Express. I connected the adapter card to one of the PCIEx4 slots on the motherboard, connected a hard drive to it, and boot up stopped when it read the hard drive connected to the adapter card and wouldn't continue to boot all the way up to Windows. I disconnected the hard drive and tried several others and the same thing happened. The hard drives are good. They work when I have them connected to ports on the motherboard. My system (DOS?) recognizes the adapter card at boot but when I disconnect the hard drive connected to it and boot to Windows, it's not listed in Device Manager. Does anybody have any thoughts on this about what the problem might be and how I can fix it?