ok i finally broke down and purchased the LSI 8 port raid card flashed in IT mode. this card will still only see 6 of the 8 ports i can add 4 m/b sata and get up to 10 drives but it simply will not see more than 6 on the LSI card...any ideas what i am doing wrong? this is the 3 rd raid card i have tried and none of them will see over 6 drives and i cant use more than 1 card in the system or it throws corrupt volume errors...i am running an x9scl board with intel I3 4130 dsm 6.0.2 v8451 ,,,this is my 5th attempt with every single version of dsm tried at this point and i am back to this one...any ideas?