Intel Desktop Board DX48BT2 Technical Product Specification

1.6.2 Serial ATA Interfaces

The board provides six Serial ATA (SATA) connectors, which support one device per

connector. The board also provides two red-colored external Serial ATA (eSATA)

connectors on the back panel.

1.6.2.1 Serial ATA Support

The board’s Serial ATA controller offers six independent Serial ATA ports with a

theoretical maximum transfer rate of 3 Gbits/sec per port. One device can be installed

on each port for a maximum of six Serial ATA devices. A point-to-point interface is

used for host to device connections, unlike Parallel ATA IDE which supports a

master/slave configuration and two devices per channel.

For compatibility, the underlying Serial ATA functionality is transparent to the

operating system. The Serial ATA controller can operate in both legacy and native

modes. In legacy mode, standard IDE I/O and IRQ resources are assigned (IRQ 14

and 15). In Native mode, standard PCI Conventional bus resource steering is used.

Native mode is the preferred mode for configurations using the Windows* XP and

Windows Vista* operating systems.

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NOTE

Many Serial ATA drives use new low-voltage power connectors and require adapters or

power supplies equipped with low-voltage power connectors.

For more information, see: http://www.serialata.org/

For information about Refer to

The location of the Serial ATA connectors Figure 11, page 45

1.6.2.2 Serial ATA RAID

The DX48BT2 Desktop Board supports the following RAID (Redundant Array of

Independent Drives) levels via the ICH9R:

• RAID 0 - data striping

• RAID 1 - data mirroring

• RAID 0+1 (or RAID 10) - data striping and mirroring

• RAID 5 - distributed parity

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NOTE

In order to use supported RAID features, you must first enable RAID in the BIOS.

Also, during Microsoft Windows XP installation, you must press F6 to install the RAID

drivers. See your Microsoft Windows XP documentation for more information about

installing drivers during installation.