Esata on Vista x64

[Michael Taylor]

I use an external esata enclosure. When I plug it into my laptop, Vista
Ultimate x64 recognises the hotplugging and sees the drive right away, and
handles it fine when I switch off.

I have a Vista Ultimate x64 desktop using a motherboard without a built
esata port. The enclosure came with an esata adapter plate that internally
connects to a sata port on the motherboard. This works, but only if I boot
the PC up with the external drive switched on first. If I switch it on
later, Vista doesn't see it. I understood that sata eand esata were both hot
pluggable, so I'm not sure why this is not working.

Does the motherboard need a esata port to work with a esata based external
hdd enclosure (to allow hotplug capability). I can purchase a PCI express
card that provides an esata port, but I don't know if thats going to make a
difference.

Thanks for any advice.
Mike

 

[Dominic Payer]

Your desktop needs AHCI enabled in the BIOS if you want to hotplug eSATA
devices. This can be unstable for some systems.

Without AHCI, if you go to Device Manager after plugging in your external
drive you can scan for new devices and the disk will be recognised. You will
either need to eject it after use, or switch it off after shutting down your
machine, otherwise the correct signature will not be written to the disk and
you might have problems the next time you connect it.

 

[Michael Taylor]

Thank you Dominic, i've learned something new today. I've looked at the BIOS
but there isn't an AHCI option, unless it's hidden. I've asked for help in
an Asus forum for my motherboard (P5N32-E SLI). Also, I'm wondering if I
enable raid and configure it as JBOD whether that would allow me to hotplug,
but whether that would result in me losing the data currently on the drives.
I don't want to re-install the OS if I can help it.
Thanks
Mike

 

[Dominic Payer]

I am not familiar with your board, but think you just need to enable RAID
for the port(s) you want to hotplug.

It would be wise to install the RAID drivers for your chipset before you
enable RAID. If you enable RAID for your system drive port by mistake your
system will still boot as the necessary driver will be present.

 

[Clark]

Thank you Dominic, i've learned something new today. I've looked at the
BIOS but there isn't an AHCI option, unless it's hidden. I've asked for
help in an Asus forum for my motherboard (P5N32-E SLI). Also, I'm
wondering if I enable raid and configure it as JBOD whether that would
allow me to hotplug, but whether that would result in me losing the data
currently on the drives. I don't want to re-install the OS if I can help
it.
Thanks
Mike

If your laptop works correctly maybe you could look at the bios for it
to see how it is set up.

In my case, I do have external sata ports but they are on a separate
controller from the internal ones. The internal ones have the AHCI
option but the external ones do not. For my Intel board, the choices
are IDE, AHCI, or RAID for the internal but just IDE and RAID for the
external. Intel says the RAID option for the internal controller
enables both the AHCI and the RAID. As mentioned, the RAID drivers may
work, but it seems they don't in my system on the external controller
with no AHCI option.

Clark