Hi Team,

I have a new Precision 3660.  Currently there are a total of 5 SATA ports on the motherboard.

Current config:  Ports 0, 1, 2 and 3 are empty and port 4 is being used by the slim DVD drive.  I therefore have ports 0, 1, 2 and 3 available for use.  NOTE*: I have 2 NVMe drives installed on the motherboard in RAID 1 mode (via BIOS).

I attached 4 SSD HDDs to these 4 empty SATA ports and both the BIOS and Windows can see the 4 HDDs.

ISSUE:

I wanted an additional 4 SATA ports to install more HDDs so I purchased and installed a StarTech 4P6G-PCIE-SATA-CARD.  https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/4p6g-pcie-sata-card

When I installed the StarTech card, I turned on the system, hit F12 (to go to BIOS) and the system would hang half way through the sequence (the Dell logo was shown and the progress bar was almost half way full).  It would not pass this point.

I then unplugged all 4 HDDs that were connected to ports 0, 1, 2 and 3, I turned on the system, hit F12 (to go to BIOS) and was able to get into the BIOS (with the StarTech card still installed).  The BIOS now showed that there was a "Mass Storage" card installed in the PCIe slot.  I booted Windows with no issue.

I then plugged all 4 HDDs into the StarTech card and rebooted the system.  I was able to access the BIOS and Windows.  Windows allowed my to access all 4 HDDs with no issues.

The problem seems to be that ports 0, 1, 2 and 3 on the motherboard don't seem to work when a HDD is plugged in and the StarTech card is installed.

Any ideas on what the issue could be?