ESATA hard drive not detected

[elim]

Hi all ill try describe my problem

I have a sata to esata adapter installed on my desktop but its not spinning up or working my hard drive. The hard drive has 3 ports

Usb to usb
Usb to dc power
Esata to esata

Over usb it works fine but when i use the esata and power cable the hard drive makes a constant ticking noise and isnt detected on windows. Ive double checked inside my motherboard that its plugged into my sata ll port not sata lll. It isnt detected at all by the computer even when i search for new hardware.

This used to work fine over esata on my laptop so it isnt hardware issue

 

[nate42nd]

Esata is tricky sometimes. If you shut down Windows then hook it up....it works I assume. Tell me if I'm wrong. I don't know why they can't get eSATA figured out.

You most likely need drivers for whatever controls your eSATA port. I have had machines that take a lot of work to get the eSATA to work right. You might need to go right to the maker of the chip on the motherboard to get a driver that will hot plug with the machine running.

 

[elim]

hi ive been fiddling about with it, it seems to be a power issue, it cant seem to power the drive for some reason, works fine with usb but cant seem to power esata

it will fire up then disconnect reconnect every 10 seconds or so..

 

[alphanumeric]

Have you got the Usb to dc power and the Esata to esata cables connected?

 

[elim]

yep.. but makes a contant ticking noises trying to start up like theres a shortage of power or something

 

[alphanumeric]

OK, just wanted to make sure. Don't know what else to tell you?

 

[unifex]

I saw this myself. I have a Seagate external drive. It has USB2 and eSATA ports. USB works fine - but it's slow. eSata works great on my new laptop which came with the eSata port. But my desktop did not, and I got a PCI-e card with two eSATA ports. The drivers for this thing were not updated by the manufacturer. It uses the JMicron chip there, but the driver comes from the card manufacturer (Hama). Now, my desktop has two copies of Windows 7 - usual, old one and a recent one on a SSD. That one I connected via AHCI, but on my Dell Inspiron 530 this can only be enabled through RAID. The add-on card is also RAID card, so I guess the two things are in conflict - so eSATA does not really work on the new set-up, much to my disappointment. Will have to see if the SP1 fixed that, haven't got the time to test it yet.

So, my point it - depending on how you connect your eSATA and what other hardware you've got, it might be tricky and not necessarily about drivers.

 

[WH4K]

If I understand, the external HDD gets power through a USB port, which in turn comes from an AC-to-USB power adapter. Meanwhile, you use the eSATA port for a data connection. Do I have that straight?

It's possible the external HDD isn't getting a proper supply of power, for one reason or another.

It would be helpful to know the brand and model number of the external hard drive, as well as the eSATA card you're trying to use it with.

As suggested above, many of the cheap eSATA port cards either don't have proper drivers available, or don't implement eSATA/AHCI properly in the drivers, with the end result that stuff doesn't quite work the way it should.

That's all I have for now.

 

[elim]

i have an esata data cable from the adapter to the hard drive and a dc 5v to usb power plugged into my desktops usb port

the adapter is just a simple male to female, like this
Akasa SATA to eSATA Adapter Kit []

and my hard drive is an enclosure from ebay exactly like this
http://i20.ebayimg.com/05/i/000/f2/99/170d_10.JPG


it just makes a constant ticking noise, it showed up fine for about 10 seconds and the hard drive spun up then it disconnects and the ticking noise comes back

 

[WH4K]

I'm going with the folks above who suggested a driver problem. Because the HDD works with your laptop, I agree that it probably isn't a hardware defect which is causing your problem.

To clarify, have you tried having the drive connected before you turn on your computer? With some implementations of AHCI, you can't access eSATA drives properly unless they are connected before you power up the host machine. In such a situation, trying to "hot plug" after the host machine has started up can give the symptoms you mentioned.

 

[elim]

I'm going with the folks above who suggested a driver problem. Because the HDD works with your laptop, I agree that it probably isn't a hardware defect which is causing your problem.

To clarify, have you tried having the drive connected before you turn on your computer? With some implementations of AHCI, you can't access eSATA drives properly unless they are connected before you power up the host machine. In such a situation, trying to "hot plug" after the host machine has started up can give the symptoms you mentioned.

yes tried it plugged in on boot, did the same thing.

all my bios settings are on ide also

 

[GeneO]

You can't hot plug to a port in ide mode, you need AHCI. That is your probably not your problem, but just so you know.

I found that with an external USB3 drive I have, some of the USB ports did not supply enough power for it (drive would beep), especially on the front panel. Try another powered USB port for the power.

 

[WH4K]

yes tried it plugged in on boot, did the same thing.

all my bios settings are on ide also

Have you tried putting your disk controller in AHCI mode?

This *should* work with Windows 7. Windows XP would bluescreen if you switched the disk controller to AHCI without installing the driver first, but Windows 7 includes an AHCI driver and should make the adjustment automagically.

 

[elim]

You can't hot plug to a port in ide mode, you need AHCI. That is your probably not your problem, but just so you know.

I found that with an external USB3 drive I have, some of the USB ports did not supply enough power for it (drive would beep), especially on the front panel. Try another powered USB port for the power.

ive tried front and back, no luck

yes tried it plugged in on boot, did the same thing.

all my bios settings are on ide also

Have you tried putting your disk controller in AHCI mode?

This *should* work with Windows 7. Windows XP would bluescreen if you switched the disk controller to AHCI without installing the driver first, but Windows 7 includes an AHCI driver and should make the adjustment automagically.

i will try that, can i change it back if i get a blue screen or anything? no chance of losing my data?

 

[WH4K]

i will try that, can i change it back if i get a blue screen or anything? no chance of losing my data?

Right, if your system bluescreens with the disk controller in AHCI mode, all you have to do is change it back. The most that will happen is your system won't boot. Data loss shouldn't happen.

It's still a good idea to back up important data first, just in case.

But you shouldn't get a bluescreen. Windows 7 includes a generic AHCI driver, so it should start right up, whether your disk controller is in AHCI mode or IDE mode.