Drive recognition on esata port vs sata ports

I've found that a number of drives I have tried seem to be rather touchy when connecting to an esata port. Some aren't recognized ever, some aren't recognized while in bios but work when in the OS (but the bios recognizes them on a sata port in bios), and some randomly disconnect from the esata port (computer & drive aren't being bumped nor the cables).

This isn't just on one PC either. I've had this happen on Win 7 and linux installs. I'm curious if others have found this to be an issue as well and if there is anything that can be done to stablize or resolve the issue. Also, I'm trying to figure out if this is a drive issue or mobo/host issue and if so can other drivers help with this.

Could you specify the motherboard, drives, and eSATA dock or cable(s) you're using?

Also, were all of your drives formatted from your current computer? Or were you trying to access older drives from earlier systems?