eSATA

[Lugztaz]

So I picked up some external HDD enclosures and a couple of HDD's.I set them up with eSATA but they don't seem to be PnP... I thought SATA was PnP? Does this have something to do with the SATA controller (onboard) or maybe the external enclosure boards?

I would like to be able to take the drive somewhere and when I bring it back, be able to hook it up and use it without having to restart...

 

[epimetheus]

Check your mobo BIOS settings. Their should be some sort of mode setting for the onboard SATA ports. It has to be set to RAID or AHCI (or similar) for PnP to work.

 

[JRS]

Also... external enclosures are often an iffy proposition when it comes to eSata.

If you continue to struggle to get eSata to work you may have to take the enclosure's sata interface out of the equation by opening the enclosure and connecting directly to the HD via an eSata to Sata cable.

I thought my P5Q Deluxe motherboard had a bad eSata port until I tried the above... only to discover I had two enclosures with bad eSata ports.

 

[Old Hippie]

It has to be set to RAID or AHCI (or similar) for PnP to work.

Pretty much true.

All eSATA is not created equal. Some MBs have an extra chipset dedicated to the eSATA ports and some use the internal ports plumbed externally.

If it's the former (usually a JMicron controller), their drivers will take care of it and if it's the latter, the SATA drivers must be loaded to enable AHCI for the hot swap feature.

Sometimes you can get around it by using the little Hotswap program.