My new cheap motherbard only has two SATA connectors, so I added a Via Technologies PCI card with more. My BIOS does not show it, so I can’t boot from it, but I can mount drives connected to it.
lspci shows…
02:00.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6421 IDE/SATA Controller (rev 50)
modprobe sata_via
produces no results.
Is there some way I can boot from it?
Hi
Find another board? Does the system have PCIe X1/X4 or a PCIe-mini slot available?
Looking on the web to get it to be bootable is to patch your BIOS, or check the M/B manufacturer for a BIOS update. Else boot from a drive that is recognized and use it as a RAID controller as it appears to be designed for.
Thanks. I’ll try the RAID suggestion as I get uneasy with BIOS updating.
Hi
Sounds like the best solution 
IME such controllers are treated as SCSI devices, which need to have their own BIOS in order to be used for booting.