eSata drive not detected until reboot

[kenmo]

Hi...

I just purchased a WD Green 1.5 sata 2.0 hard drive. It is to replace my 1.0 Seagate sata drive which is housed in an external eSata Vantec Nextstar 3.0 case...

My 1.0 TB Seagate works as hot swappable when placed into the Vantec case. I can power on the case and Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit recognizes the hard drive and no need for a reboot...

When I'm finished using the 1.0 TTB Seagate hard drive I can use Windows 'safely remove' icon in the task bar...

However when I placed the 1.5 WD drive into the same case I have to reboot my computer to get it recognized by Windows... However it does show in the 'safely remove' icon in the task bar...

Thinking it was a problem with the case I purchased a newer Vantec CX e-Sata case. And I have the same problem... However if I connect the case via usb and not eSata the drive appears instantly with needing a reboot... (both Vantec cases can be connected usb 2.0 or e-sata)....

Since I'm using this drive for backing up my hard drives, I much prefer having the eSata option...

I also have another Windows 7 computer with an e-Sata port on the motherboard and I have the exact same problem...

Any ideas?

Thanks kindly...

[drjtech]

Next time, rather than reboot try going into Device Manager and "Scan for hardware changes". I have to do this sometimes when I swap eSATA drives.

[kenmo]

Thanks kindly...I'll try this when I return home from work...

[asiafan]

how u are using esata disc in Win 7 ? when i am adding disc win 7 is not starting till i remove sata cable

[Seeker47]

Next time, rather than reboot try going into Device Manager and "Scan for hardware changes". I have to do this sometimes when I swap eSATA drives.

Do you happen to run into this periodic thing I'm seeing with my eSATA, where it gives the whole system a sort of "brain freeze" for a couple seconds ? The mouse pointer is frozen, anything else that's going on at the moment pauses. It's not frequent enough or bad enough to be a major problem, but it is kind of annoying. (I don't hot swap, btw.)

[drjtech]

Sorry, I've never seen that on any of the desktops or laptops I've used eSATA on.

[redwudz]

Part of what's being discussed seems to relate to AHCI issues: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host_Controller_Interface

Not sure why one drive would have problems with hot swap compared to others. I have a couple of WD drives that use the eSATA connection and they are always recognized when I turn them on using a AHCI setup. Without it, then I would need to reboot for recognition. I would check the ACHI controller settings.

Maybe the 'Green' drives go to 'sleep' mode and that causes a problem. I know my newest Motherboard puts most all my drives except the boot drive to sleep when I haven't used them for a while. Then I have to wait for a few seconds before they 'wake up' and I can access them. I suspect this is a direct result of 'Green' energy saving settings on the MB and OS. You might look to your energy saving settings in the control panel.

I suspect the problems are related to the controllers themselves, or specific motherboards, unless something in the OS is blocking the drive recognition.

[Moontrash]

turn on AHCI in the BIOS...7 is not like xp...xp i used my esata drive and it safely removed w/o issue w/o having to turn anything on in the BIOS...7 I had to turn on AHCI and all is well

[kenmo]

Next time, rather than reboot try going into Device Manager and "Scan for hardware changes". I have to do this sometimes when I swap eSATA drives.

Thanks for the reply.... I tried this a few times and it worked once but not subsequent e-sata disconnects & reconnects...

[drgt]

Did you get it resolved?

[kenmo]

No gave up on it... Too intermittent for my liking so I reverted back to usb.

[Seeker47]

Part of what's being discussed seems to relate to AHCI issues: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host_Controller_Interface

Not sure why one drive would have problems with hot swap compared to others. I have a couple of WD drives that use the eSATA connection and they are always recognized when I turn them on using a AHCI setup. Without it, then I would need to reboot for recognition. I would check the ACHI controller settings.

Maybe the 'Green' drives go to 'sleep' mode and that causes a problem. I know my newest Motherboard puts most all my drives except the boot drive to sleep when I haven't used them for a while. Then I have to wait for a few seconds before they 'wake up' and I can access them. I suspect this is a direct result of 'Green' energy saving settings on the MB and OS. You might look to your energy saving settings in the control panel.

I suspect the problems are related to the controllers themselves, or specific motherboards, unless something in the OS is blocking the drive recognition.

After using eSATA, reverting to USB (at least for moving large files, or large quantities of files) is downright painful. So, I'm glad I haven't had to. Maybe there is some advantage in using older hardware, as I have been doing for several years now ? Nary a problem, and I don't think I've ever even seen an AHCI setting ! I'm loving this Antec Veris MX1 enclosure -- slim, doesn't get in the way, stays cool, and so QUIET.

[aedipuss]

afaik you need to power on esata drives first and then plug them in to get them to work properly.

[drgt]

Does this apply to you?
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=444831

[drgt]

afaik you need to power on esata drives first and then plug them in to get them to work properly.

You mean connect the data cable while the drive is spinning?

[aedipuss]

yes, power on first then connect data cable.

[drgt]

yes, power on first then connect data cable.

Nope, not working.

The ONLY thing that works is rebooting...

[kenmo]

Never worked for me either....

[redwudz]

My two eSATA drives have no problems being recognized when powered on. One is a dual drive with RAID 0 in hardware in the enclosure. I do have AHCI on in BIOS. One enclosure has two separate 1.5TB Seagate HDDs and the RAID enclosure has two 2TB Samsung drives. I originally had them hooked to the MB SATA controller, with no problems, and now they are hooked to a cheap Rosewill 2 channel SATA controller in my PC-X slot. I have also used a Promise TX4 PCI SATA controller. All of them saw the drives with no rebooting.

I think it's a MB controller problem. Especially if you have AHCI turned on. Maybe a PCI or PCI-X controller would be the way to go. The ones that plug into the PCI-X slot are handy if you don't use it for anything else, and then you still have your PCI slots free. My Promise TX4 PCI SATA card wouldn't work with W7 64 bit, so I had this one laying there and it's worked great. Even better than the Promise card. (About $20US) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132014

I would suggest that any add on SATA controller should use a Silicon Images chipset to avoid problems, but those chipsets are common.

[jman98]

I'm not saying that above suggestions aren't useful, but as I had a vaguely similar situation earlier in the year with a new PC build and I totally got it fixed with some different advice I received here, I thought I might pass it on. I think there's a good chance that someone out there will find this thread and my suggestion will be useful for them. Again it may not help at all in this situation but if nothing else has worked, I'd give it a shot.

My situation was that my 2 internal SATA drives would vanish while the PC was running. Sometimes on reboot one or both of them would not be detected. I am using an SSD to boot so the PC would boot, but the large disk drives I was using for storage were often gone. My solution was to buy better SATA cables. I went to my local Fry's and bought some good quality SATA cables that had right angle connectors on one side. I was previously using some cheap SATA cables with no right angle connectors. My problem was permanently fixed with the better cables.

[drgt]

All advices are welcome!

In my case, my mobo does not support AHCI, so that PCI / -e controller solution mentioned earlier seems interesting. I followed that link, I just did not understand all the notations / abbreviations...

Can the poster describe what to look for to run SATA II drives off it?

[redwudz]

Which notations/abbreviations?

PCI Express eSATA II x 2 / ATA 133 x1 RAID 0/1/0+1/JBOD mode Controller Card

PCI Express is the small MB connector just above your video card connector, about 1 1/2 inches long. If you don't have one of those, then you can use a regular PCI (Long connector) card.

eSATA is the external SATA connector. You can use up to a 2 meter long cable. It uses a different cable and connector than SATA. The speed of the drive will be the same as an internal SATA connector most times.

That particular card has either internal SATA connections or external eSATA connections selected by some jumpers.

ATA 133 is the typical speed of a hard drive. Slower devices like optical drives may not work on a faster connection as they use ATA 66 or ATA 33. Mostly that refers to PATA (Parallel) type drives and connections. If you do plan to run optical drives off of any SATA controller, make sure it will work with the slower devices.

SATA drives, controllers and cables are rated for 1.0 revision (1.5Gbp/s), 2.0 revision (3Gbp/s) and 3.0 revision (6Gbp/s) SATA II is the SATA 2.0 revision.

RAID is a system of using two or more hard drives hooked together for faster performance or better data retention. RAID 0 is fast, but if one drive fails, all data is lost as the data is split between the drives. RAID 1 is slower, but data is copied onto both drives. JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Drives) lets you use dissimilar drives together in a RAID setup. I don't often use RAID.

Some controller cards seem to only be able to work in a RAID setup, but most will also work with individual drives.

I only mentioned that particular card as it's really cheap. I don't know how dependable it is. Most SATA controllers are in the $50US range and up. A card with the Silicon Image controller seems to be the most stable and versatile controller chip. There are a lot of versions of it, though.

Most of the information above is just from memory, so there may be a few errors.

More info about SATA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

[drgt]

Thanks for the explanation. My confusion is why 0 is mentioned twice in RAID 0/1/0.

Anyway it does not really matter since I am not interested in RAID.

The question is: Will this card actually work in a hot plug situation or will it work after reboot too?

Like I said my mobo's (ga-965g-ds3 and ga-945p-s3) do not support AHCI.

Would not be preferred to install a USB 3.0 controller / hdd docking station combination http://www.equip-info.net/equipenglish/index.php?page=equiplife&series=1&kat=3&id=2475 ?

I assume in this latter case the speed will be limited to sata II speed since the usb 3.0 is faster?

[TBoneit]

It might be helpful to know what motherboard.

I just rebuilt a Q6600 for someone that had a P5K and it had no AHCI in the bios, Flashing it as a P5K-R enabled the AHCI and then Windows 7 was good to go with the Trim command for the SSD boot drive.

[drgt]

It might be helpful to know what motherboard.

The 2 motherboards are mentioned in my previous post.