is eSATA supposed to be plug n' play?

S

Spare-Flair

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Apr 4, 2003
Messages
7,471
I just put my old harddrive into an external to use as a backup drive. Normally with externals I'll leave them off most of the time so they don't heat up and only turn them on when I need to use them. That works great with USB but this drive is connected via eSATA.

The drive won't be seen by Windows XP and won't appear in MY COMPUTER unless the drive was powered on when the computer POSTs. It works fine that way but if I just turn it on or plug it in whenever, it won't be seen, I can't unplug the drive either or it'll disappear and won't reappear when I plug the eSATA cable back in unless I restart the computer.


Isn't eSATA supposed to be plug n' play? Was I misinformed or is there something wrong with my computer or something I can do to make it plug n' play?
 
eSATA supports hot-plugging and automatic detection.

What type of "eSATA" connection are you using? You can't just use a slot cover adapter with an old SATA-I host, for example.

It also depends on the HAL of your OS regarding which devices it assumes to be attached and removed at "uptime".
 
hjreggel said:
eSATA supports hot-plugging and automatic detection.

What type of "eSATA" connection are you using? You can't just use a slot cover adapter with an old SATA-I host, for example.

It also depends on the HAL of your OS regarding which devices it assumes to be attached and removed at "uptime".
Click to expand...

I don't know what kind of eSATA connection it is specifically. This enclosure has an eSATA port on the back and it came with an eSATA cable and eSATA PCI slot eSATA socket that I connected to a SATA II port on my motherboard.

Even if I start the machine with the external HDD connected to eSATA and everything works, when I unplug it inside windows I'll get the "device disconnected bing-bong" sound but if I plug it back in (like I would with a USB external) there will be no device connected notification and it just doesn't work at all with hot plugging.
 
Ah, I see. Just from internal SATA connector to slot cover. If your SATA host really supports SATA-II, it should work.

Try this:
-Boot the system withtout the enclosure attached
-Connect the enclosure
-Open System Management, Device Manager
-Select Scan for New Hardware

If that works, you should see the external disk in the disk section. Before unplugging, you should manuall "stop" the disk.

If it only works as described above, the best solution would be to get a PCIe x1 eSATA add-on card.
 
hjreggel said:
If it only works as described above, the best solution would be to get a PCIe x1 eSATA add-on card.
Click to expand...

Thats prob the best bet. For Hot Swap to work with sata it has to be set to ahci where the op prob has the onboard sata ports set to ide or raid. If his xp drive is running off them as well it is not worth the hassell switching it to ahci either. An addon card would be better.
 
swatbat said:
Thats prob the best bet. For Hot Swap to work with sata it has to be set to ahci where the op prob has the onboard sata ports set to ide or raid. If his xp drive is running off them as well it is not worth the hassell switching it to ahci either. An addon card would be better.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately there's no room in my case for an addon card. I already had to hack the eSATA bracket into the case.

backma1.jpg


I suppose the problem is AHCI then, damn, I really wanted to just hot swap this external drive instead of rebooting everytime I want to use it. You can see by the size of my case why I have an external drive as well.
 
Yea internal SATA ports rarely support proper hot swap, sadly in your case I don't see a better way to do what you want. Aside from an eSATA controller...
 
Then you have to try the Rescan method. This even works perfectly with the internal SATA ports of my old ICH6R chipset. It does not work on the SiI3114R ports, but I have to check whether a firmware update is available.

I get the best performance using a PCIe x1 to ExpressCard adapter together with an SiI3132 based Express/34 eSATA card. It does a much better job than my PCIe x1 add-on card with JMicron JMB360.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top