Getting Hot Swap/Plug SATA to work

M

Mastakill

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 19, 2007
Messages
188
Intro

Hi,

I've been trying to get Hot Swap/Plug SATA working for a while now.
I have a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 rev 1.0 MOBO, with multiple onboard storage controllers.
I have the latest non-beta drivers/BIOS/Firmware of everything.

This MOBO contained a bracket which simply converts 2 SATA ports to eSATA ports and directs them + power to the outside of the case. (this is without any chip or so, meaning the Hot Swap/Plug support only depends on if the SATA controller itself supports it)

Besides this, I also have a Sharkoon Sharkoon SATA QuickPort Intern 1-Bay
Sharkoon said the following about this device:
there is no chip inside the drive bay. So "Hot Swappable" depends on your SATA controller. With latest manufacturer drivers and in AHCI mode, it should support "Hot Swappable".
Click to expand...

On my MOBO there are the following Storage Controllers:
  • Intel ICH10R (part of the South Bridge) with 6 SATA ports
  • Marvel 9128 with 2 SATA ports
  • Gigabyte SATA 2 with 2 SATA ports
  • JMicron JMB362 with 2 eSATA ports (but no external power)

The JMicron is simply disabled in the BIOS (because I want to attach a 3.5inch HDD without casing to it, I also need power)
The Marvel 9128 is also disabled in the BIOS.
The Gigabyte SATA 2 ports are attached to the 2 ports of the bracket.
The Sharkoon QuickPort is attached to the ICH10R.
Besides this, there also 2 SSDs attached to the ICH10R (of which 1 contains the OS).

AHCI is enabled for all controllers. The OS was installed with AHCI enabled for all controllers (incl the ICH10R).
"IDE Native Mode" (an option in the BIOS that exist only for the ICH10R and is also required for allowing Hot Swap/Plug) is only enabled since a short time. The OS was installed with this setting still on "Legacy IDE Mode". (I suspect this might be part of the problem?)

In short: all settings in the BIOS are fine I think.

I have following problems:

  1. The Sharkoon QuickPort on the ICH10R does not support "Safe Removal". This can mean 2 things (which are both wrong):
    • Hot Swap/Plug does not work
      or
    • Write Caching is disabled
  2. The 2 HDDs attached to the bracket (via the Gigabyte SATA 2 Controller) are always in use and can't be safely removed because of this.

Below some screenshots:

hotplug2.jpg

J: and R: are attached to the bracket via the Gigabyte SATA 2 Controller and do show up in the list.
G: is in the Sharkoon QuickPort via the ICH10R controller and does not show up in the list.

hotplug.jpg

The left window is in the Sharkoon QuickPort via the ICH10R controller and does not have "Removal Options".
The right window is attached to the bracket via the Gigabyte SATA 2 Controller and does have "Removal Options".

unmount_issue_1.jpg

unmount_issue_2.jpg

This always happens when I try to safely remove a disk attached to the bracket via the Gigabyte SATA 2 Controller.
Even directly after a reboot or even after killing svchost.exe or any other process that has a handle to it, it remains always locked.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the tip!

I just tried turning off MS Defender. It did not help... :(
I also tried killing as much processes as possible. I could not find the locking process... :(

Then I tried rebooting in safe mode, just to figure if it is at all possible and YES, in Safe Mode I can safely remove the HDDs...

So does anyone have an idea how to find the locking process?

Thanks
 
WhoLockMe does not support Windows 7, does not support x64 and has been out of support since 2009.

I would love to hear if someone knows a tool that actually works...
 
Just tried to find the locking app with "msconfig"...

First I tried to disable all non-MS services and startup items, but that did not help
Then I tried to disable everything (= diagnostic startup), but that did not help either

As it does work in Windows Safe Mode, there must be a difference between "safe mode" and "diagnostic startup". Not sure what that difference is or how to test it...
 
I just installed Windows 8.1 on another SSD and so far everything seems to work as it should...

all controllers (ICH10R, Marvell 9128 and Gigabyte SATA 2 show their HDDs in the safe removal window and are not locked when removing them.
Also when attaching a new HDD to the controller it gets recognized.

So it is clear that something is wrong with my Windows 7 setup and that the hardware does support what I want.

I still need to look further to see if I can find updated or specific drivers and if they break it again.
 
Last edited:
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