ASUS Drive Xpert, Orange-White Ports? Need help.

[joeybadoey01]

Hi there,

I ran out of SATA ports on my ASUS P5Q Pro MB and so I'm trying to use on of the other 2 ports (white and orange) on the board.

I've read that I can enable "Normal Mode" and I will be able to use a single drive, but I hear those ports are slow?

I also see that I have to format the drive I connect, luckily I have a blank drive, but can I easily take that drive out and place it in another computer or in to the regular SATA ports later?

I'm just hoping that the drive doesn't HAVE to be connected to that port with the specific drive xpert software in order to be read.

 

[A Cheese Danish]

To my knowledge, those ports can be used as basic sata ports. You only need to use Drive Xpert if you wish to boot from the drives used in those ports.
You may need to enable them though to make them active ports; but I haven't worked with Drive Xpert, so I'm not sure what
options are available. But you should be able to plug a drive in, format it, and write to it.
And if need be, place it in another computer and have it work. You just cannot boot off of a drive in those ports unless "normal mode" is selected.
And normal mode may need to be selected to have 1 drive connected.