Trouble with ext. USB/eSATA sled

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davidlem

Gawd
Joined
Jul 26, 2005
Messages
670
So I have all these SATA drives lying around and I wanted to be able to swap them in and out for different purposes (backup, mass storage, media). I bought a simple external case from CompUSSR with USB and eSATA ports. At first I didnt have the proper eSATA<-->eSATA cable so I went ahead and used the USB connection for a week. When my eSATA cable came in I swapped it out (removing the USB cable) and went for broke. It's detected by the Gigabyte SATA BIOS before Windows loads - but Windows (Win7x64) won't boot if it's attached and powered-on. If I power off/disconnect the eSATA connection and boot, then connect it there is a long pause and Windows is all... "WTF?".

I figure there is some sort of reg entry for the drive association and changing which interface it communicates on is freaking it out..? Anybody have another theory? I've gone back to USB and it's working fine, but I'd prefer the increased speed of eSATA.

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R
External USB/eSATA case: Nexxtec (or something)
OS: Windows 7 beta 7100 x64

Thanks
 
Go into your BIOS and check your hard drive order - most likely the ext HDD is placed in front of your OS drive, hence why it is trying to boot from it.
 
Standpoint said:
Go into your BIOS and check your hard drive order - most likely the ext HDD is placed in front of your OS drive, hence why it is trying to boot from it.
Click to expand...

along this line, whats on the ext HDD? (I don't need specifics, more importantly: is there an OS image or something like that?) if it were just a bunch of more or less worthless data, the BIOS would look for something to boot, see that its not getting it there, and move down the list until it finds something it can use (same thing can cause a hang if you leave a game DVD in your PC and have the DVD drive set as first priority), generally speaking if it were just "worthless" data, it'd move on, however it may have ONLY this external disk as an HDD, so its looking there, and then moving to your DVD/CD drives, and then looking for an FDD or something else (if this were the case, you'd get "System Disk Not Found" errors, do you?) however if the ext HDD has some incompatible image on it, that is bootable, it could very well be trying to load that, and failing (silently)

also do what enginurd said to do if you need to (just because its good practice)
 
I'll check the BIOS again but I'm almost sure the Gigabyte SATA ports are all at the end of the boot order..

obobski said:
along this line, whats on the ext HDD? (I don't need specifics, more importantly: is there an OS image or something like that?)
Click to expand...

On this particular disk is my VideoCopilot.net sounds and visual effects...nothing OS related.
 
davidlem said:
On this particular disk is my VideoCopilot.net sounds and visual effects...nothing OS related.
Click to expand...

yeah it shouldn't be an issue then (in terms of, it doesn't have a bootable image)

check through your BIOS settings, do what eng suggested, check back if its still not working
 
enginurd said:
When you installed Win7, did you have your SATA controllers set to AHCI/RAID mode? If not, you'll need to load the drivers then switch the mode in the bios after a restart.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976
Click to expand...

When I installed Win7, this group of SATA ports was disabled in the BIOS.

My two internal SATA drives (XP and Win7) are connected to the pair of onboard non-raid SATA ports. So I didn't have the other 6 SATA/RAID ports enabled at that time. I only enabled that set when I got this USB/eSATA case and plugged my eSATA PCI slot module into one of them (one of the 6 SATA/RAID ports previously disabled in the BIOS).

I just checked the BIOS and the only thing I saw fit to change was "SATA AHCI Mode" under the SATA/RAID configuration. It was default set to 'Legacy' and I changed it just now to 'AHCI'. Made no difference.
 
So I booted the computer with the eSATA on and connected, made sure it was detected by the SATA/RAID BIOS, then shut it off so Windows would boot. Once in Windows I turned it on again and it won't show the drive letter, the HDD activity light wont relax, but I can see the actual SATA drive model in Device Manager.
 
You know what's embarrassing? I solve these kinds of puzzles every day at work. And when I get home, I am just exhausted and completely unable to think logically.

Gigabyte had updated drivers (12/09) for Windows 7x64 and it immediately solved my problem. sheesh

Thanks guys for suffering through that brainfart with me :)
 
davidlem said:
You know what's embarrassing? I solve these kinds of puzzles every day at work. And when I get home, I am just exhausted and completely unable to think logically.

Gigabyte had updated drivers (12/09) for Windows 7x64 and it immediately solved my problem. sheesh

Thanks guys for suffering through that brainfart with me :)
Click to expand...

lawl.

at least you solve them where it counts and not the other way 'round :cool:
 
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