P6T and Port Multiplier

[smachine]

Hello,

I've recently picked up a Thermaltake BlacX Duet docking station thinking that I would be able to use it with the e-Sata port on my P6T. The problem is that I only see one hard drive. I've changed the BIOS settings to AHCI but still not able to see the second HDD. Both work fine with USB so it's not the dock.

So I did a little searching and I need port multiplier for this to work. The board has these controllers:

JMicron® JMB363 PATA and SATA controller - http://www.jmicron.com/JMB363.html
JMicron® JMB322 (Drive Xpert technology) controller - http://www.jmicron.com/JMB322.html

According to those specs this board should have support for it, right?

Also found this review - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/x58-motherboard-i7,2252-4.html - which mentions that it has port multiplier. "The JMB363 controller supports up to two Ultra ATA 133 drives, an eSATA 3.0 Gb/s port, and two internal SATA 3.0 Gb/s drives via a JMB322 port multiplier"

Other than this everywhere else I look this feature does not exist on this board.

So the question is does this board have port multiplier? If so, how do I turn it on? Would an Internal SATA to External eSATA Bracket work and to which port would I connect it too?

 

[GarciaM25]

I have the P6T SE which does NOT have Port Multiplier, but yours should. I had the Blacx Duet too before returning it, not because I couldn't get it to read two drives, but because once I installed a controller card capable of doing PM, it would literally stop responding to my RaptorX about 1 - 2 minutes after booting to the desktop! Look on the box and it shows two RaptorX drives mounted to the Duet! I went with a USB 3.0 single dock now just to be safe.....

I would think the eSATA connection on the motherboard itself would have the port multiplier already setup - if not, connecting two drives should trigger a device installation with Win7. Don't know which port a connector cable would work to, but I can guess NOT connecting it to one of the orange ones on the board!

 

[Rigwald]

Have you gotten the dock to work with eSATA and properly showing BOTH drives yet? If so, how did you do it? I am having the same problem with my P6T SE and Win 7 x64. It will only see 1 drive at a time.

ASUS Tech Support said that the P6T SE SUPPORTS eSATA port multiplying/multiplexing

 

[smachine]

No, I've had no luck with it and got a single e-sata dock instead.

 

[Rigwald]

I have gotten the duet to work. I needed to download all the downloadable updates from the ASUS Site (bios, chipset, etc...) and now both bays work fine!