eSATA Harddrive doesn't always show up

hi everybody

i have a 1TB WD My Book external harddrive and i recently upgraded from a USB connection to an eSATA connection (which, logically, increased read/write speeds a lot due to the faster connection) ...

in some part of my bios-post it checks for disks that can be used as raid and it discoveres my 2 IDE discs as well as this eSATA external drive.
so far so good.

but the problem is that win7 sometimes discoveres the drive and sometimes not, even though the bios always discoveres it.
If i "look for new plug'n'play hardware" in the device manager it sometimes finds the harddrive and sometimes just freezes.
If it freezes ... nothing more happens (drive doesn't show up in OS)
If it finds it ... the OS still doesn't show me the drive.

If I need something from that drive (my games and apps are stored there) I need to reboot and hope it gets detected correctly.

It is really annoying because I don't want to revert back to USB (which connected always) due to the slower speeds... (i often copy big files onto that HD)...

Any ideas?


edit: please move to hardware&devices i clicked the wrong part of the forum

Moved

Check to see if you have the latest BIOS< as well as motherboard drivers for your motherboard. Also, check to see if W7 is trying to be helpful by not detecting the drive b/c it has the eSATA port asleep on boot up....

i don't use the newest bios and i will not, had only problems with that.
(i run my Q6600 @ 8x400mhz with 1.3375v) and after updating bios, resetting the settings and redoing my OC it didn't even post.... i then upped the voltage to about 1.4 or 1.42 (something liek that, don't remember) and it worked again but then i decided to downgrade my bios because Q6600 produced a lot of heat more (5-7°C idle more...)

will look into bios for sleep mode of eSATA ports

ah and i use the cool'n'quiet to manage the speed of my cpu fan from bios (if not it turns with 2700rpm and is _really_ loud) and this didn't work either with most of the newer bioses...

I can understand. 'gratz on getting your CPU to 3600 - mine hits a brick wall at anything above 3200, and it wants the voltage at 1.4+/- even at that....

However, a driver issues sounds like the primary culprit, followed by a possible PSU issue in not supplying enough power to the eSATA port.

nono my cpu is @3200 ... for 3600 i need at least 1.48v (didn't test thoroughly at this setting though) else it may load win7 or not ...
hmm maybe it's the psu i do have a lot of harddisks connected...
still looking through bios ... it has a lot of options ...

changed back to IDE mode on eSATA controller (i thought i set SATA to AHCI but i set eSATA to this so it may be that...)
now it shows up but sadly this doesn't prove anything ... sometimes it did show up while using the AHCI setting as well

well ... the os reacts much faster with 3.2ghz instead of 2.4 so i'd like to keep it that way...

up to now it works with the IDE mode (dunno why i configured eSATA as AHCI ...) so if it remains working it's ok.
powersupply *should* be ok ... i don't use one of those new high-power-consumption-graphic cards ...

Sorry, I misread - I see now your multiplier is 8 not 9 - 9 * 400 does yield 3600, which is what I thought it said.

Still, I have mine set to 9 * 360, giving me 3240 - I tried moving it up a bit and it goes stupid.

My RAM is rated at 1000 MHz, but if I use it at that setting then I have to tone down my FSB to ~357 - 360 is a much nicer, rounder number, so I leave the RAM at 800.

Anyhoo - I still think it is a PSU issue - I'd test the drive on another computer's eSATA port, or else disconnect some of your drives and see what happens - also, you might try loading BIOS defaults (in terms of removing the OC) and see if that makes a difference.

On my rig, I am using a 780W PSU - more than ample, until I take into account the dual GTX260s (also OCd), dual Seagate Barracudas with a single WD and a PATA DVD burner, plus all sorts of fans, USB internal AIO card reader, and all sorts of USB devices (MX Revolution, G15 Keyboard, Bluetooth dongle, dual iPAQ cradles, etc.) and I can understand why my CPU doesn't like going above 3200....

yeah like i said i use a 8800GT which, afaik, uses a lot less power than those GTX260s or something similar.

btw. i have a question to ram:fsb ...
it does NOT give any performance increase if the RAM clock is faster than the FSB clock or does it NOT give a performance increase if it is more than double the speed?

e.g.
my FSB: 400 (=1600 because it is quadpumped)
so my ram should be either
800 mhz (=1600mhz effective)
or
400 mhz (=800 effective)
going faster than one of those to (i suspect the first option) does not increase performance because the fsb just can't keep up with the ram. though which one is it?
(effective = that what you select on motherboard and which is reported as final speed, like DDR3-1600)

i'm confused with the quadpumped/doublepumped etc.
which speeds should match up?
when OCed i use 400 fsb (faster fsb= faster system afaik, better increase then just increasing the multiplier) but if i increase more the voltage requirements go up extremely fast so i don't do that.

hope you understand this post it's become kinda messy

btw. ram is rated DDR3-1600 but because they're 4x1 i can't get to that speed. so would it make more sense decreasing FSB as my ram is causing a bottleneck because it runs slower than my fsb (it runs @640mhz (=1280) right now)

and again to cpu temps: my overclock causes my cpu to be about 4°C warmer so i don't care that much


btw. my 8800GT is overclocked from 625mhzto 707 (while memory from 900 to 1030)

ok some more clarification (it IS messy :S):

in cpu-z there is the Bus Speed (400) and the Rated FSB (1600) as well as the memory clock (640mhz) (which gets doubled to 1280). should now the memspeed match up with the bus speed or should it be double the bus speed (which means Rated FSB and effective RAM speed match)?