Esata issue

[commissioneranthony]

I am trying to connect my macally T-S350SU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...rnal_enclosure_macally-_-17-347-018-_-Product to an available esata port. My motherboard, a DFI 790GX-M2RS, does not have any native esata ports. I tried a sata to esata cable and powered the enclosure on before the computer, then turned on the computer. I also tried to use the external drive via esata when the computer was turned on before the enclosure. still no luck. The harddrive and sata ports work because I took out my 2ndary backup drive to do the test. I then tried using my nMEDIAPC ZE-C128 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820132021 which had a esata port. on further inspection, there was no esata host controller, so it was essentially like using the cable which I tried before.

Will buying a esata host controller allow the esata external enclosure to work? I don't understand how the sata to esata cable did not work, because sata and esata are essentially the same bus.

The reason why I am doing this is because I wanted to test my macally T-S350SU which I just received from newegg today. I am using the internal adaptor for an external harddrive project, and if the external harddrive doesnt work, I am going to return it.

I looked on DFI's site to see if there were any bios updates to address this problem, but there was none. Is there some special sata setting in bios that I have to set? I have the sata setting set to native ide mode. I don't have a raid setup, so setting the sata option to raid doesn't make sense. Is this some ahci thing? I am not sure.

Thanks for any help. I know this is a noob question, but I haven't used esata before.

 

[Dangman]

In order to use eSATA IIRC, you have to enable AHCI. However that will render your current OS install unbootable.

However there is a workaround/hack to allow you to enable AHCI AND have a bootable OS install without reinstalling the OS in AHCI mode:
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=444831

I have not tried it but from what I've heard, it supposedly works.

 

[BigCrazyIndian]

AHCI should only be needed if you want to hotplug the drive.

Your first method (connecting the drive, powering it, and then booting the computer) should have worked, it does for me when I need to hook up an eSATA drive to my machine. Given that it didn't, and you tested a few things, I'd venture to guess that the SATA->eSATA cable you have is bad. I've heard of it happening before with those cheapo brackets that are sometimes included with eSATA drives.

 

[commissioneranthony]

Thanks guys for the help. the problem was that the esata cable wasn't in the external hard drive all the way. I took the drive apart and found this out. Thanks though!