No hot swap WD

[jokdom]

I have a WD2001AWSS, firmware 01.00101, that I was able to hot swap a few times and now it will not hot swap. Two other drives will hot swap on the same equipment.
(esata attached Antec Varis external enclosure and Cable Unlimited docking station)

To mount this drive I must reboot with the drive attached and powered on. Then all is OK.

Tested with WD's wingding app and this 2TB drive passed.

Should I try a firmware update if I can find one?
Does anyone have experience with firmware updates on hard drives.?

 

[jokdom]

I just got an answer from Western Digital support:

"We are very sorry for the inconvenience. Let me just inform you that the Caviar Black Hard disk drive does not support and not recommended to do Hot Swapping and hot plugging.Internal drives does not have any firmware update as you can see on the web site. Check the link below.Thank you
WD Support / Downloads / SATA & SAS / WD Caviar Black"

I replied with a more precise description of my problem. That I am using an Antec
external enclosure and/or a Cables Unlimited docking station. When the Caviar Black was mounted in one of these, esata connection made and then the power turned on to the external setup, the computer does not detect the drive. The only way I can get this drive detected is to reboot.

Two Seagate drives do not have this problem and are detected.

The Caviar black had been detected a few times earlier but now no more.
If detected a few times previously, why not detection all the time? I have cleaned the sata contacts with an eraser. Still not detected.

I have now asked WD support " Will Caviar Blacks work and be detected in Antec Veris enclosures or Cables Unlimited docking stations".

One question seems to be answered. There is no firmware flash for this drive.

Still waiting for suggestions or advice from the forum members. Anyone out there???

 

[jokdom]

More complications. Working in eSata mode.
Plug and play detection has stopped on all my drives on both the Altec enclosure and the docking station. Rebooting will mount them though.
I have cycled all my drives in both enclosures and not one of them will plug and play.

It is a pain in the rear to have to reboot just to attach an external drive. I found that I could run Seatools (Seagate disk test program) and it would discover the external drives and mount them. That still works for my P35 XP Home computer and is a good workaround for the mounting problem. The P35 computer is in IDE mode.

It worked for a while on my P67 Win7 x64 computer. But today when I ran Seatools it messes up. Sometimes freezes the computer and I have to do a forced shut down. After rebooting it's OK till I do an orderly shut down and sometimes hangs while shuting down.
Tried the latest Seatools but no improvement. I keep getting "stxcon.exe has stopped working". I do not get that on the XP Home computer.

Before when only the Caviar Black hdd stopped being detected ( no plug n play) I thought it was the fault of that disk. Now so much else has happened I am not sure what the cause is.

I wish I knew more about the workings of plug and play so I could troubleshoot more effectively. Been Googling but have not found much.

I was going to do a new install on the Xp computer to set up AHCI mode. Now I doubt it would be worth the effort.

The silence from the forum body is deafening.

Discussted and demoralized. That's me!!

 

[jokdom]

Solved

Solved my problem and have an idea of the cause.

To reiterate;

I ordered an Asus P8P67 board in January 20011. After ordering and before delivery
the word came out there was a problem with Intels series 6 chipsets that this board contained. The Sata II ports were prone to failure because of a transistor deficiency in the B2 stepping. So I promptly ordered a VantecSata II four port PCI card as a workaround.

I did the build in April, after my vacations, and used the Vantec card. The Vantec card worked but caused longer boots and an extra click after start up.

I had heard that Intel expected only 5% of the users of the boards with series 6 chips would have problems and then only after a long period of usage. So I decided not to use the Vantec card unless I needed it in the future and enjoy the short boot times.

About a month later I began having problems hot booting my eSata external drives. I have an. Esata/USB, Antec MX-1 enclosure and a Cables Unlimited docking station.

The first problem I had was a 2TB Caviar Black stopped hot plugging in the docking station. The only way I could get the computer to recognize it was to reboot with the drive in the docking station and docking station power on.
Installing the 2TB Caviar Black in the Antec enclosure gave the same results. Four other of my hard drives would hot boot. So filed a ticket with Western Digital support explaining the problem and asked them for help. Possibly a firmware revision. I was stunned by WD's reply that Caviar Blacks were not supposed to hot boot and I should buy Velociraptors. I replied a couple of times protesting that the drive used to hot plug but WD would allways evade my question "should the Caviar Black plug and play(hot plug) in an eSata Antec enclosure or a docking station with AHCI set in the bios". WD support finally stopped answering me.

Then all my drives stopped hot plugging. But all drives could be recognized if I rebooted. Then one of my drives, the 1.5TB Baracuda, would sometimes fade away
and not be recognized again until another reboot. Yet if I could get the Baracuda to stay online long enough to run a disk test, Seatools, it would pass.

Not having another AHCI capable computer to test with, I decided to reinstall the Vantec 4 port Sata card as another way of checking. Walla!! Every thing works as expected when I plug the drives sata connection there. All my hard drives work and hot plug in either enclosures.

It appears to me the series 6 chip problem may be manifesting itself early in hot plug operations. Although regular internal disk operations have not been effected so far. Just my observation. Not a fact.

Anyway I no longer have a hot plug problem and my faith in computers and HDD's has been restored.

Thanks for all those answers and suggestions I never received. It has been a tricky one.