Am I missing something? (eSATA)

DeaconFrost

DeaconFrost

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I finally decided to try using an eSATA drive, and I'm having an issue. It is a 1 TB drive in a NexStar drive carrier. It works perfectly fine when connected by USB, but when I try connecting it by eSATA, the drive is detected properly in Device Manager, but it won't get a drive letter. When I go into Disk Management, it shows as needing to be initialized. That step always fails. I swapped cables, and even tried leaving the drive connected and rebooting. I'm going to try it on a laptop next, but is there a step I'm missing, or a driver needed for eSATA operation? The system in question is in my sig, and I have the ports set to AHCI, with the chipset drivers loaded.
 
I tried the drive connected to my laptop, and it worked fine. Now I need to figure out why it isn't working on my tower.
 
Is it perhaps caused by your mobo not being able to hot swap sata drives? Try plugging it in and rebooting your system. If it works after reboot then it would point towards a hot swap problem with your mobo.
 
Which model do you have? You normally have to use external power while using eSATA with most third-party enclosures.
 
The Vantec enclosure has it's own AC adapter, which is plugged in. It is a NexStar CX.
 
Initialization always fails. I've had to do that randomly for some external drives over the years, and never lost any data.
 
What MB are you using and is the eSATA port on another (2nd) chipset that needs drivers?

Edit...I looked at the manual for a GA-EP45-UD3L and there's no 2nd chipset. You must be using one of those SATA to eSATA conversion cables.

I'd take the drive out of the case and connect it directly to the MB. If the drive is OK there, it must be a problem with the chipset in the external case.
 
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