julie8v

Hello wonderful forum folks,

I'm having a problem installing an external SATA card on my Dell Dimension 4600 (see stats below). I just bought a 500GB external HDD to use as backup, and thought that I'd get a SATA card as well (the 4600 doesn't have external SATA inputs) so that I could connect the external HDD using SATA for fastest transfer speeds (I do a lot of music recording and photography, so have lots of large files to transfer often).

Here's what happened:
With the addition of the SATA card, all 4 PCI slots are now full (I removed the old phone modem card to make space). Popped the card in, followed the installation instructions that came with the card (using the driver provided by the card manufacturer). When I booted up, my monitor was at the wrong resolution. Device Manager revealed a conflict (the yellow exclamation mark) with the video card and the SATA card. I disabled the SATA card in Device Manager, rebooted, and now the monitor works correctly again. Everything else works fine as far as I can tell. The external HDD currently works with USB 2.0.

The Device Manager properties for the SATA card read:
"This device cannot find enough free resources that it can use." (Code 12)
PCI slot location, if it helps: PCI Slot 1 (PCI bus 2, device 0, function 0)
Driver: INITIO Corp. 12/23/2005

Hmmm. Where to go from here? I read some forums and articles, and these are some ideas I've seen, none of which is guaranteed to work:

a) Install an updated driver from INITIO. - I tried their website and this driver is the most current.
b) Install a different driver somehow (what?) or uninstall and let Windows figure it out (?)
c) Something about updating/flashing the BIOS - am hesitant to mess with the BIOS unless it is safe to do that.
d) A hardware conflict - Is it possible that the computer can't handle 4 PCI cards? That would seem kinda lame. Or does it have to do with the 2 internal HDD drives and 2 CD/DVD drives?
e) Give up on SATA and get a Firewire card (IEEE1394b) - would I still have the same resource conflict?
f) Switch around the PCI cards in the slots and see if anything changes.

Have any of you, lovely users, had a similar problem? Anyone tried to install a SATA card? I'm new to SATA and don't know much about it. Would greatly appreciate advice on how to proceed next! Thank you!

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Stats:

Dell Dimension 4600
Windows HP Home Edition Service Pack 2
Intel P4 2.66GHZ
512 MB RAM
80 GB internal HDD
200 GB internal HDD
500 GB external LaCie d2 Quadra HDD with multiple USB/Firewire/SATA interface (currently using USB 2.0 but want to use eSATA)
CD-R drive (internal)
DVD-R drive (internal)
PCI cards in the 4 slots:
- 1. Digidesign Audiomedia III sound card (for Pro Tools)
- 2. SoundBlaster Live! sound card
- 3. ** Initio INIC162x S-ATA Controller (**not working yet**)
- 4. Graphics card for monitor
19" widescreen flat panel monitor