limit on SATA hard drives???

[ikon 439]

When I connected 14 drives up via SATA and eSATA, the BIOS would only show 12 of them. And, of course, my boot SSD was NOT one of those 14! Once I switched the external enclosures from eSATA to USB, everything became OK, in the sense that I could see all of the SATA drives. But why? Is there a limit on the number of SATA hard drives a BIOS can handle?
 

 

[gibster 37]

I suspect that the esata port on the motherboard shares with an internal sata connector. (Assuming that the external esata port was a motherboard port).

[Ikon-TNG 15]

Sorry for the long delay responding. I've been a bit overwhelmed with issues getting this server up and stable. Anyway, if I recall correctly, the 2 enclosures were connected to a MediaSonic eSATA serial ATA revision 3.0 PCIe card. In the top-right corner of the box it says, "HP1-SS3". The motherboard is a Sapphire Pure Black x58.

Edited December 8, 2017 by Ikon-TNG

[up7500 20]

At one point I was using an rocket raid esata card that supported port multiplier functionality and four bay external enclosures.  This was a singal PCIe lane card like yours looks to be.  Worked great with one enclosure.  When I tried to add the second enclosure to the system it was never stable and would drop random drives.  

Finally upgraded to a card that was a four PCIe lane card with 2 mini SAS connectors, used 2 breakout cables, and went all internal with the drives and didn't have any more problems.