eSATA problem Windows 7 x64

smithsunknown said:

@James Colbert Sadly, I do not but I might eventually be able to get a hold of a friend who has a laptop with an eSATA/USB combo port to try the adapter. Btw, The card works fine because I tried just an eSATA drive plugged into the cable & Windows recognized the drive.

So it is either the esata controller on on the seagate or the card controller driver on the system. I suspect the latter. AHCI can be a pain at times.

In fact, I was just having issues with an external sata hotswap. If the system booted with the drive connected, it would show. If I inserted it into the drive dock for the first time after a boot, it was fine. If I disconnected the drive and then tried to reconnect the same or another drive later, I would have to force a hardware rescan in order for the drive to be recognized. I solved the problem by removing the windows standard AHCI controller driver and replacing it with Gigabytes gsata driver. Problem solved.

That said, perhaps that provides us with another simple check that could provide us with pertinent information. I assume that you have likely tried a hardware rescan, but I guess it's worth mentioning. Apologies if you've already tried this or know how:

In
Device manager, right click on IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers (yours may read different) and choose 'scan for hardware changes'. Does the drive show up now (usually, an autoplay window will appear, asking you what you want to do)?

James

@James Colbert I've already tried that, & it doesn't seem to help sadly.

Anybody else have an idea for this?????

In re-reading all of the info in this thread, your setup seems a bit complicated. Have you talked to Seagate about this? Is the GoFlex STAE103 the cable you have? The sata>esata cable you link to seems a bit 'alien' here. Does Seagate recommend that a sata>esata conversion cable be used? What about the card? Is it deemed compatible by Seagate?

I think that is your next step. Determine if your 'topology' is correct. Please post back and let us know what they say.

James

you do know that windows 7 64bit doesnt support hard drives 1tb or bigger through esata this is why its not working it will either have to be plugged in to the internal sata ports or via usb caddy

i was looking for the same answer and came across the article in the microsoft knowledge base

hope this helps somewhat

gamehedz said:

you do know that windows 7 64bit doesnt support hard drives 1tb or bigger through esata this is why its not working it will either have to be plugged in to the internal sata ports or via usb caddy

i was looking for the same answer and came across the article in the microsoft knowledge base

hope this helps somewhat

Hi gamehedz :). Thanks for the post. Could I impose on you to post the link? It might help someone googling for the solution.

i will see if i can find it again for you and post back later

this might help for win7 32bit users

check Error message when you start a Windows 7 or Windows Vista-based computer after you change the SATA mode of the boot drive: "STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE"

It states "... During the Windows 7 or Windows Vista installation process, any unused storage drivers are disabled. This behavior speeds up the operating system's startup process. When you change the boot drive to a driver that has been disabled, you must enable the new driver before you change the hardware configuration. ..."
Even though this talks about BOOTing from SATA, I found that it concerns eSATA, also.
After I had installed Windows 7, I bought an esata Thermaltake Blacx and it was not recognized.
I had to enable AHCI in the bios (which then crashed my Windows 7 system at boot time).
I then (from Safe mode) changed HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci to zero(0) and re-booted. It came up and recognized my drive which I can power-on, power-off, etc. without needing to re-discover it.