e-Sata no longer showing as Safe Removal device

[kenmo]

I have an external Sata drive and it is no longer showing in my Safely Remove Hardware list. Only my external USB drives are listed...

I checked my driver's properties and write caching is not enabled...

I must turn on the external drive and reboot my computer for it to be listed. I also turn off my computer when I detach the e-Sata hard drive....

Any thoughts?

Thanks kindly...

[redwudz]

eSATA doesn't show as a removable drive on most of my computers. IMO, it shouldn't anyway as it is tied directly to the PCI bus and should act exactly the same as a internal drive. Some MBs do show them as removable, though. I suspect something updated in your system, maybe the OS itself and that changed it. Most people complain when it is listed as removable. This can also happen with internal SATA drives with some MBs and drivers.

With a quick search, I found this article on how to make a SATA drive not be listed as removable. It shows some registry keys that seem to govern that and you may be able to figure out how to reverse it so it is now listed as removable. http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=99884.0 It may at least give you somewhere else to search. If you mess with the registry, back it up first.

I went to AHCI mode for both my computers that use a eSATA external drive, then it's easily hot pluggable. You can remove it safely anytime you want as long as nothing is reading/writing from/to it. As soon as you plug it in, then Windows Vista sees it. But it never shows as a removable device. Unfortunately AHCI doesn't work on all MBs and you need to install it when you install the OS. You can do it afterwards, but you have to do a bit of prep work.

[kenmo]

I found the answer... Changing in bios my SATA controller to AHCI mode enabled my e-Sata drive to show in the Safe Remove Hardware list...

Apparently some Sata controllers can be run in several modes including Raid, AHCI, IDE compatible and Sata...
Putting your Sata controller into AHCI mode enables the hot swappable option....

[redwudz]

AHCI enables hot swapping for SATA drives and also includes native command queuing.
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host_Controller_Interface

It will add a few seconds to your boot cycle and you must have it enabled in your registry or you will get a BSOD when booting. If you activate it in BIOS before installing the OS, the registry change is automatic. Otherwise you will need to do this: http://jrbii.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!5E74A5E75ECFD62E!331.entry

[kenmo]

It's working fine for me for about 2 weeks now.... I'm running XP-Pro 32 bit. I did not need any registry changes either.

[Poppa_Meth]

So is AHCI recommended over running in IDE mode? I'm assuming so. I'm just getting to work setting up a new computer for the store and this gigabyte mobo is the first to offer me this option. I haven't installed Vista yet so it seems like now would be the time to change it. By default it runs in IDE mode, with an option for RAID and AHCI.

[kenmo]

I AHCI is only required if you want to make your SATA drive hot swappable...otherwise ide or RAID is fine...

[Poppa_Meth]

I finally got mine set up. I chose RAID mode, which also enables AHCI, even though I'm only running one HDD. Speed is awesome on this thing for a budget build. 33 GB data backed up with Macrium Reflect Free from the main drive to a hidden partition. Time: 12 minutes.

eSATA drives still do not show up in safely remove for me though. From what I've been reading you should be fine to just turn off the drive though so long as no activity is happening.

[redwudz]

The only two that show up on my Gigabyte MB PC for safe remove are the boot drive and the BD burner, neither of which I would ever want to remove. They are plugged into the 'Purple' SATA sockets. The external eSATA drive doesn't show up for safe removal. But I just turn it off after I shut down the PC. It does hot swap in that it shows up as soon as you turn it on or plug it in. AHCI should give you a bit more performance, besides the hot swap capabilities.

[Poppa_Meth]

I also used a Gigabyte board. From what I've found on the net people say you get better performance from the Intel controller so I didn't bother plugging anything into the gSATA connections on Gigabyte's controller.

My girlfriend's PC is on an nForce 4 board and it always shows SATA drives as removable unless you tweak the registry to prevent this.

My main gripe with AHCI is that Gigabyte's Xpress Recovery 2 software can't se the HDD to use it for backup. Of course their software probably isn't all that great anyway.

My other gripe is that all the fancy expensive disk management boot software I have, like Paragon, and Acronis, can't see the drive to format it before installation. Gparted on the other hand can is it just fine, and it's free.