esata on MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum with a VANTEC NST-360SU-BK

[bkandor]

Hi All,

I just bought 2 Vantec NST-360SU-BK esata hd enclosures. The enclosure
comes with a header bracket that adds an esata port to the back of your
computer. Internally it just plugs directly into a motherboard sata
connector. Externally you use the supplied esata cable to connect to
the enclosure.

My motherboard is an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum/SLI. It uses the nforce4
chipset (I believe). When I hook up this enclosure with the esata
cable and power it up, nothing happens in windows at all.

More disturbing, if I have the enclosure plugged in and powered on and
then try to boot my computer my bios will hang at 'detecting ide
drives'

So I'm trying to figure out how to get this to work. Is it just not
compatable with my motherboard?

Thanks,

Kandor

 

[Guest]

My reply is at the bottom:

Hi All,

I just bought 2 Vantec NST-360SU-BK esata hd enclosures. The enclosure
comes with a header bracket that adds an esata port to the back of your
computer. Internally it just plugs directly into a motherboard sata
connector. Externally you use the supplied esata cable to connect to
the enclosure.

My motherboard is an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum/SLI. It uses the nforce4
chipset (I believe). When I hook up this enclosure with the esata
cable and power it up, nothing happens in windows at all.

More disturbing, if I have the enclosure plugged in and powered on and
then try to boot my computer my bios will hang at 'detecting ide
drives'

So I'm trying to figure out how to get this to work. Is it just not
compatable with my motherboard?

Thanks,

Kandor

You may need to install the motherboard SATA drivers. Should be on CD you
got with the M/B.

 

[Anna]

You may need to install the motherboard SATA drivers. Should be on CD you
got with the M/B.

Kandor:
As "tfw..." has informed you -- you probably need the SATA driver for your
HD, most likely the Silicon Image 3114 driver listed here -
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/driver/dvr/spt_dvr_list.php?part=1&kind=4&CHIP=4&ID=6
I would guess that driver is already included on your motherboard's
installation CD. But check your User Manual to be sure it's the right driver
for your system and carefully read the installation instructions.

Re: your Vantec SATA enclosure...
I note the specifications indicate that the device includes a "SATA to eSATA
bracket". I'm familiar with eSATA ports but I'm curious as to the function
of this "bracket". Isn't the eSATA port installed on the Vantec enclosure so
that your SATA signal cable would run directly from the enclosure to your
motherboard's SATA connector? What is the function of this "bracket"? Would
you be good enough to clarify this for me? Also, what is the length of the
eSATA cable?

Hmmm. Right after writing the above I wonder if the answer is that this
bracket is attached to the backplane of the computer case and contains a
SATA port (or eSATA port?) on the exterior and a SATA port on the interior
so that the SATA data cable runs from the enclosure to the exterior SATA
(eSATA?) port and a SATA cable runs from the interior SATA connector to the
motherboard's SATA connector. Is that it?

Thanks for the info.
Anna

 

[bkandor]

Hi Anna,

Yes, the backplane connector has a normal sata cable on the inside
which is meant to plug into a motherboard sata port. On the outside of
the backplan is an esata port. The enclosure also has an esata port.
So you use the supplied esata cable to connect the enclosure to the
backplane.

I'm confused about the driver though. According to what I've read this
esata enclosure's drive should show up in the bios same as any sata
drive. The drivers on disk are for windows only. As I mentioned I
cannot even make it through my bios with one of these drives plugged in
and turned on. My bios will hang during the 'detecting ide drives....'
phase.

There are several web reviews of this enclosure and no one mentions any
difficultly with the esata connection, they just appeared to have
plugged it in.

Thanks,

Kandor

 

[Anna]

Hi Anna,

Yes, the backplane connector has a normal sata cable on the inside
which is meant to plug into a motherboard sata port. On the outside of
the backplan is an esata port. The enclosure also has an esata port.
So you use the supplied esata cable to connect the enclosure to the
backplane.

I'm confused about the driver though. According to what I've read this
esata enclosure's drive should show up in the bios same as any sata
drive. The drivers on disk are for windows only. As I mentioned I
cannot even make it through my bios with one of these drives plugged in
and turned on. My bios will hang during the 'detecting ide drives....'
phase.

There are several web reviews of this enclosure and no one mentions any
difficultly with the esata connection, they just appeared to have
plugged it in.

Thanks,

Kandor

Kandor:
Thanks for the additional info.

I'm not sure I can help you any further with the SATA driver issue. Bear in
mind that the SATA driver (presuming you need to install one because it's
not incorporated in your motherboard's SATA controller) has *nothing* to do
with your SATA enclosure per se. The system needs the driver to recognize
the SATA HD. The fact that the SATA HD is in an enclosure and the drive is
configured as a SATA HD (and *not* USB) determines that your SATA HD is
treated as an *internal* HD by the system - exactly the same as if were
installed internally to one of your motherboard's SATA connectors. As a
matter of fact, that's the beauty of your SATA-USB enclosure. The SATA drive
will perform substantially better than a USB-configured HD precisely because
it *is* treated as an *internal* HD by the system.

I'm assuming you do not have any other SATA HDs in your system. Is that
right? If you *do* have one or more SATA drives installed and there's no
problem with the system recognizing them, then there shouldn't be any
problem in the system recognizing an eSATA-connected HD. You say "The
drivers on disk are for windows only". Are you referring to the SATA drivers
on the motherboard's installation CD? If this is the case, as I indicated
above, these drivers must be installed for SATA HD recognition. Please refer
to my previous comments.
Anna

 

[bkandor]

Hi Anna,

I understand about the driver.

My motherboard (msi k8n neo4 platinum) has to sets of internal raid
ports. 4 are part of the nforce4 chipset and 2 run off of a silicon
image chipset. My C drive is a sata drive on the nvidia chipset. I
have a mirrored array running on the sil3132 chipset.

Even though like you say if I have sata drives already there shoud be
no problem recognizing the esata enclosure - It still is not recognized
when plugged into any of the nvidia nforce43 sata ports. In fact the
system hangs in bios trying to detect them.

To experiment, I unplugged the array and tried plugging the backplane's
internal sata cable into it. Surprise!! the esata enclosure drive
shows up in the sil3132 bios no problem. But there is a problem: On
this motherboard the sil3132 can be set in bios to run in raid mode or
sata mode. Either way you need a driver in winxp to enable the
controller. When it's set to SATA mode the driver wont install
properly in windows. I found loads of people (even reviewers)
complaining about the same thing.

SO I'm still stuck here. Thanks for your help.

Kandor

 

[DL]

Allthough winxp sp2 is supposed by default to recognise sata
drives/controlers there are apparently people who have problems unless they
use the F6 option in the installation or repair of winxp to install raid
drivers from floppy.
With regard nvidea chipset sata I recollect on a mobo I had with this sata
controler, it also had Sil, there was a driver on the mobo cd that had to be
specifically installed. It apparently wasnt installed by default when I
installed other mobo cd drivers.
PS I also initially had a new K8n neo4 plat. which I had problems with,
using Sil sata - I forget exact problems, some time ago - I rma'd it for a
Gigabyte mobo with Sil and Nvidea sata, allthough I now use an Adaptec sata
card and have used nvidea sata at the same time.