New eSATA drive not showing up in Explorer

[GettingByOk]

Hi Experts,

I'm running 32-bit XP Professional SP2 (just found out it'll be desupported
on 7/31/10 but that's ok for now).

I just installed a new 2-bay eSATA drive, a Sans Digital MobilStor MS2UT+(B)
with hardware dial set to RAID-0.

I turned on the SATA-4 mobo connector in my BIOS and when I hit Esc to
continue Windows signaled New Hardware Found and when I look in Device
Manager the eSATA shows up with the same character string displayed in the
New Hardware Found pop-up. When I double-click on the device name the General
tab says device is working properly.

However, no new drive shows up in Windows Explorer. I need to format the
drive to use it. How can I do that? Does it have to show up in Explorer or
won't it show up until it's formatted using a different method?

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I'm running 32-bit XP Professional SP2 (just found out it'll be
desupported on 7/31/10 but that's ok for now).

I just installed a new 2-bay eSATA drive, a Sans Digital MobilStor
MS2UT+(B) with hardware dial set to RAID-0.

I turned on the SATA-4 mobo connector in my BIOS and when I hit Esc
to continue Windows signaled New Hardware Found and when I look in
Device Manager the eSATA shows up with the same character string
displayed in the New Hardware Found pop-up. When I double-click on
the device name the General tab says device is working properly.

However, no new drive shows up in Windows Explorer. I need to
format the drive to use it. How can I do that? Does it have to show
up in Explorer or won't it show up until it's formatted using a
different method?

SATA controller driver installed (chipset/etc) from the manufacturer's
support site?
Initialized the drive in Drive Management yet?

 

[GettingByOk]

SATA controller driver installed (chipset/etc) from the manufacturer's

support site?

Unfortunately they're not available there, I checked www.sandigital.com and
the only thing downloadable for this unit is the barely-useful instruction
manual.

Initialized the drive in Drive Management yet?

No. I checked Disk Manager and it seems to show 1 1TB disk but I loaded in
two of them. It's supposed to be set to RAID-0 but only one disk is showing
up, plus some other partitioned disk of a much smaller size that I can't
identify. Given that, I'm pretty hesistant to format anything in case the
array itself is not set up correctly. May just need to call their non-24hr
tech support on Monday when they open again..... I'll also write them an
email in case anyone looks at email there over the weekend....

 

[DL]

That's sata controller for your motherboard, and not your external unit.
If the sata controller wasnt previously used you will probably need to
repair install winxp and install sata controller driver from floppy early in
the process, via F5 option

 

[philo]

Hi Experts,

I'm running 32-bit XP Professional SP2 (just found out it'll be desupported
on 7/31/10 but that's ok for now).

I just installed a new 2-bay eSATA drive, a Sans Digital MobilStor MS2UT+(B)
with hardware dial set to RAID-0.

I turned on the SATA-4 mobo connector in my BIOS and when I hit Esc to
continue Windows signaled New Hardware Found and when I look in Device
Manager the eSATA shows up with the same character string displayed in the
New Hardware Found pop-up. When I double-click on the device name the General
tab says device is working properly.

However, no new drive shows up in Windows Explorer. I need to format the
drive to use it. How can I do that? Does it have to show up in Explorer or
won't it show up until it's formatted using a different method?

You need to go into disk management...
create and format a partition

 

[GettingByOk]

Thanks. No problem doing that, but just curious why would anything show up in
Device Manager (saying device is functioning properly) and in Disk Manager if
the controller driver is missing?

 

[GettingByOk]

Shenan, DL, Philo,

Figured it out. It was a doc and/or hardware bug. In the manual there are
allegedly 2 ways to set the drive config:

--The RAID switch in the back (one small step, just need a small screwdriver)
--The LCD console in the front (a number of steps but not that bad)

Turns out the easy way (the RAID switch) doesn't work That's the way of
computers too often. The new L: drive RAID-0 config'd dynamic disk is now 4%
finished formatting its 1.9 TB of usable space after 9 minutes, it's going to
take quite awhile but that's ok.

Thanks again, you were a great help.

Robert