Esata HD problem

Hi all,
I am new here and I have the same problem as the OP. Windows recognized my ext. HDD (Seagate FreeAgentPro 500 MB) when I first plugged it into the eSATA port on my laptop, but then it disappeared. Upon restart my laptop locked up and continues to lock up unless I unplug the HDD. Since it locks up I can't access the BIOS with the HDD plugged in. I now have the HDD connected to USB as I did before and everything is fine. I have AHCI enabled in the BIOS.
I would appreciate any help into solving this since I would like to take advantage of the higher eSATA speed.
Thanks

Having problem with Windows 7 and (external) eSATA disk. Hangs during boot. When booting eSATA cable disconnected and then plugging the cable does not recognize the eSATA disk. However, when using USB connection everything worked fine (except in some cases of inactivity).



In my case the following solved the problem; Goto Power Options-> Change Power Plan Settings -> Change Advanced Power Settings -->

• Hard Disk --> Turn Off Hard Disk after -> on battery and plugged in: <-- NEVER.
• USB: Selective Suspend Setting-> on battery and plugged in: <-- NEVER

After these changes the eSATA connection plays fine. Hopefully this helps in your problem as well...



Ps. If you are using XP the key is to search after blogs/MS docs using keywords like: USB selective suspend.

ArtoN,
I followed your recommendation and changed the settings in Win7 and voila the eSATA disk is recognized and Windows does not crash on reboot anymore. I had a service call in with Dell, but as you can probably imagine they don't know what the problem is.
Thank you so much for the info with this problem.
Seems like Microsoft still has some bugs to work out with their latest OS. I am just glad that this solved the problem.