Vista + eSata no plug and play. Drive does not show up

[Guest]

Hi,

I have 2 eSata drives (only 1 is always plugged in and normally off). When I
switch it on the drive should come up in My Computer as another HD like in XP
but in Vista nothing happens. Also I cannot see it in "Disk Management".

When I restart the computer with the eSATA drive on it shows up in Vista and
works correctly.

When I switch it off and replace it with the other eSata drive (I only have
1 eSata plug in my mobo) the other drive does not come up and I need to
restart again so that the other eSATA drive shows up.

Anyone else have a similar problem. Got the latest Nfore drivers etc.
Its weird that in Vista I lost the plug and play capability for eSATA

 

[CMShepard]

It works for me. I have an external 320GB drive in a case called
SNT-2316. Can't remember the manufacturer. Ah, Athenapower.
http://www.athenapower.com/sub/eb2316sata.htm
I have it cabled to an external SATA2 port. I just turned it on, and
Vista popped up a window showing the files on it. This is not a
true eSATA, as it just uses the bracket that comes with the drive and
a regular SATA cable. My cable is only 3' 3" long.

It may depend on the chipset in the external enclosure. Or maybe it
depends on the motherboard hardware and the drivers for it. (Likely).
I am running a Gigabyte M59SLI-S5.
This is a nVidia chipset board using AMD socket AM2 cpus.
I have not tried hot plugging the drive; seems dangerous to me,
regardless of the spec.

 

[Jason Knutson]

This is a problem with the current nvidia SATA drivers. They currently do
not allow for hot plugging the drives, I'm having the same issue.