eSATA2 / eSATAII Drives disappear after Vista Upgrade

[William F. Kinsley]

I have a dell laptop with an ExpressCard54 slot and a SIIG eSATA2 card and a
Segate External SATA2 Drive. Everything was working fine on XPSP2, then when
I upgraded to Vista the external drive disappeared.

1) The card will show up in the device manager, but no drive. On the device
Info. Tab/ Device Location, it says "No Devices Detected". (???)
2) I have upgraded to the latest driver and still no drive. (Lastest Device
driver for the ExpressCard ver.1.0.19.0 rel. 10/31/2006)
3) The drive works with other computers. (i.e. the drive seems fine)
4) I have a wireless ExpressCard, and it works. (I.e The ExpressCard Slot
seems fine)

What am I missing?

Thank You
Bill

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

There have been issues with this card and Seagate drives that sound very
like this. If I remember correctly the resolution involved a jumper setting
on the drive. I came across this in a discussion thread concerning eSATA
ExpressCards and Seagate drives on MacBook Pro computers on the user forums
on Apple.com. There is a thread there on ExpressCards.

I had already resolved my issue with this card by replacing my Seagate drive
with an Hitachi drive in the SATA enclosure I was using and used the Seagate
elsewhere. If you have a non-Seagate SATA drive you can try it to see if
that fixes it.

I had this problem regardless of whether I was using it with a MacBook Pro
or a Compaq laptop. It is in the card's firmware with certain jumper
setting on the drive. I have had several updates for the Windows driver
come down from Automatic Updates so I had assumed it was fixed.

 

[William F. Kinsley]

Thank you, I will take a look at the MacBookPro forums, but I hope that is
not the case, the Seagate External drives are sealed and can only be opened
by force. Like I said, it was working fine with WindowsXP SP2, it only
stopped functioning after the Windows Vista Upgrade.

Thank you,
Bill

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You might try disconnecting the drive and powering it off, shutting down,
powering up the drive and connecting it, then restarting the computer.

 

[Dale]

First, a lesson for us all, at your expense unfortunately, is to make sure
that all external drives are hooked up when doing an upgrade.

I say that because this seems to be related to another oft-reported bug
where Vista doesn't recognize external IDE drives after installing Vista
onto SATA drives. The problem is, in that case, that the IDE drivers are
not installed. In your case, I am guessing that the problem is that Vista
didn't install the SATA drivers in your case.

One solution that has worked for the no-IDE-driver problem is to boot the PC
with the external drive installed and then, in discovery, Vista adds the
drivers. Because your interface is an external interface with its own
drivers to load, it is hard to say if this will work for you but it might be
worth a try: plug in the adapter and the drive and then boot up.

HTH,

Dale

 

[William F. Kinsley]

Been there, done that so many times, with so many different varitions, it is
not funny.

 

[William F. Kinsley]

I wish that was the case, but I did have the drive connected during the
upgrade. However, even if that was the case, it would be a Vista bug. For
example, what if I purchased the drive after the upgrade, Vista would still
need to support it.

Thanks for the reply,

Bill

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Is this a "One-Touch Drive"? I have read many posts concerning them all
during the TechBeta program. You may have reached the point where you need
support from the equipment manufacturer.

 

[Dale]

I agree about the bug and, unfortunately, Microsoft never reissues the
installation media. The only example of doing that up to now was the R2
version of Windows Server 2003. This bug will exist for years though SP1
may install the necessary drivers to at least make the external drives
available after install.

Dale

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

William, check out this kb.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929550/en-us

 

[William F. Kinsley]

Thank you, While device manager was not showing any errors, this hot fix
resolved my problem.

Bill

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You're welcome.

 

[Jeff]

William
I have kinda the same problem. I have a dell Precision M4300 Have two
internal drives one with XP and one with Vista that I can Swap out. My drive
with XP works just fine, when I put a Siig eSataII in the expresscard slot
,card is seen in device manager and all drives plugged in work great
regardless of Make of Hdd. When I Remove the Xp Drive and install the Vista
drive and boot the Siig eSataII is seen inthe device manager as good but no
drives and no activity on card. Now here is the catch with the expresscard
in its slot and I plug a another Esata card into the PCMCIA card slot the
expresscad will come alive and work perfect even when the PCMCIA card is
removed it still works fine when I restart the computer same processas before
to make it work.