eSATA backup drive not recognized on other computers

[Joe Peanut]

Had an eSATA external drive as backup of my aging desktop (Dell Studio XPS 7100). The computer had 2 internal drives on RAID0, and the eSATA external drive not part of the RAID.

Now old desktop died. Tried to connect eSATA drive to 2 different computers, and both fail to recognize it. When I go to Computer Management / Disk Management, it tells me "you must initialize a disk before logical disk manager can access it". But that would delete all my data.

Any suggestions on how to save my files? Or why the old desktop could access this disk, but others can't?

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Go into the bios as many esata io connections must be configured/turned on in the bios.

 

[Joe Peanut]

Thanks but no such luck. It was turned on already.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

I have four esata drives and a couple can't be seen unless I use as USB II/III drives so I appreciate what you're challenged with. I have used different cables and tried different connections but only USB is seen.

 

[Joe Peanut]

Thanks.

Tried the USB plug just now. Same thing. The system sees the device, but cannot access the volume unless I initialize it.

To paraphrase the great philosopher, Butthead: "This sucks more than anything that has ever sucked before"

 

[linnemeyerhere]

I just went the easy route and bought a new 4 drive USB III drive tower and it works great!

 

[Joe Peanut]

Just ordered a NAS from NewEgg, but it still doesn't help me accessing my old data.

New development tho. Took the old dead computer and removed everything attached to the motherboard that wasn't 100% necessary. Card reader, DVD, WiFi card, nVidia video card. Even removed 3 out of 4 DIMMs in case one of them was defective. Not only the computer managed to boot, but it can read the eSATA disk no problem. Once the NAS gets here, I'll back everything up, then get my new desktop.

Hopefully problem solved - we'll see once the NAS gets here - but I still don't know why other computers cannot access the volume. One other funny thing that I noticed is the it is a 3TB eSATA disk, and it shows as such on the old desktop. But on the other computers that I attach it to, it shows as a 750GB unmounted volume.