Why is ESATA such a problem

[nate42nd]

Everywhere you look people have problems wit ESATA. If you search for problems with it there are endless pages. I build a lot of systems. About 20% (1 in 5) of them I cannot get the ESATA running properly. NCQ, Hot Plugging, I know about these things. I know drivers are the issue most of the time but even after installing the correct driver and trying different ESATA drives which work fine on my personal system, I STILL can't get some to work. With a lot of motherboards from many manufacturers acting the same way I know it's not defective motherboards. Is there a way to find out why ESATA works like it's supposed to or why you have to shut down to make it work.

Is there a good way to get it running right? I have had it with doing research day after day trying to get ESATA working right. I have started to tell people to simply power down, plug their ESATA drive in, then power back up. It will work fine....then power back down when you need to disconnect it.

It seems a waste to not use this great port to it's potential. I use nothing but ESATA on my personal systems. I LOVE it! It's fast and easy. I am frustrated with it when building new systems. Any SIMPLE answer from one of you wizards would be wonderful. Thanks. Have a good day.

 

[pparks1]

The "only" issue that I have run into is that on my 64-bit box, after the first connection of my drive, it won't reconnect after turning my enclosure back on. I have to go into Disk Management and rescan for new disks and I am all set. This problem doesn't happen on my 32-bit Windows 7 Dell laptop. Both are using the same drive enclosure and drive. My enclosure is the Thermaltake blacX.

 

[nate42nd]

The "only" issue that I have run into is that on my 64-bit box, after the first connection of my drive, it won't reconnect after turning my enclosure back on. I have to go into Disk Management and rescan for new disks and I am all set. This problem doesn't happen on my 32-bit Windows 7 Dell laptop. Both are using the same drive enclosure and drive. My enclosure is the Thermaltake blacX.

Thanks for the reply pparks. That is a good way I had forgotten about. I build machines for other people. Most will not understand how to go into "disk management" and scan for new disks. I have no problem but the people I build for do. I have two desktops and a laptop which I can simply plug an ESATA drive into and they will pop right up in "My Computer" This is how ALL systems should act. I have got to find a way to make this happen. I also have 3 ESTA capable drives and they all work fine on my 3 systems.

Interesting that you don't see the problem with 32 bit systems. I always use 64 bit. Maybe it's just that and the driver problems with some configurations.

 

[GeneO]

I have had no problems with the Jmicron chips on various OS, on the MB or PCI-e cards. I have also extended one of my MB Intel AHCI ports to my front panel eSATA connector on my case.

Some poor implementations of AHCI don;t support hot-plug according to their interpretation of the spec. You need to research this a bit before buying I guess.

 

[nate42nd]

I have had no problems with the Jmicron chips on various OS, on the MB or PCI-e cards. I have also extended one of my MB Intel AHCI ports to my front panel eSATA connector on my case.

Some poor implementations of AHCI don;t support hot-plug according to their interpretation of the spec. You need to research this a bit before buying I guess.

I have found some problems mentioned on almost every board I have ever purchased. (About 40-50) and I am usually able to get it running, but this one I am working on now is controlled from the Intel H55 chipset. I assume it's a 64 bit driver problem from Intel, but if every person who got this board downloaded the newest drivers from the board manufacturer and still and still had the same problem, you would think everyone would have the same eSATA problem and it's not mentioned in all reviews. I hope someone will enlighten me. This is a good board. I had the same problem with an ASUS board two weeks ago. AMD CPU and AMD chipset. I have had it happen on Gigabyte boards, all different configurations. I know it's a matter of learning. That's why I have always been here. There are good people here who will help.

I would like to hear from a person like me who builds 10-15 systems per year and has to deal with this issue. I would like to know if they have found the "magic solution" This is the one I am working on now.

ASRock > Products > Motherboard > H55M/USB3 > Download

 

[pparks1]

It's only my 64-bit box at home with the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R rev 1.1 board that has this problem where it won't be recognized without disk management. On my work 64bit box, with an Asus P5QL-Pro mobo I have no problems whatsoever. We also have laptops in our office with 64bit Windows 7 and they haven't had problems connecting to my eSATA drive. I also use eSATA from my cable box to a Thermaltake BlacX enclosure and it works good.

 

[nate42nd]

It's only my 64-bit box at home with the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R rev 1.1 board that has this problem where it won't be recognized without disk management. On my work 64bit box, with an Asus P5QL-Pro mobo I have no problems whatsoever. We also have laptops in our office with 64bit Windows 7 and they haven't had problems connecting to my eSATA drive. I also use eSATA from my cable box to a Thermaltake BlacX enclosure and it works good.

Thanks again. It's good to know these details. It must be driver related. Probably chipset or whatever controls the eSATA port drivers. Maybe some controllers just don't have drivers that work correctly yet? I wonder if 64 or 32 bit OS has anything to do with it. Probably. I haven't needed to do a 32 bit build with eSATA in at least a year so I have no way to know.

Thanks for the info, and it's good to talk with you again. Good to see you're still around. I don't spend as much time as I used to here. I still try to stop in and help or get help when I can.

 

[GeneO]

64 bit Windows 7 here. Asus P7P55D-E Pro (Jmicron Esata). I also have used a JMicron based PCI-E contorller on Windows XP 32 bit and Windows 7 64 bit. No problems. On my P7P55D-E pro I also use one of the P55 AHCI Intel ports for eSATA with no problems on Windows 7 64bit. I get sequential read speeds in excess of 120 MB/s.

You shouldn't have any problems with eSATA on that JMB362 chip on your motherboard or using any of the P55 SATA ports in AHCI mode for eSATA.

Of these systems you built, how do you have the eSATA set up? Specifics would help - chipset (including the external drive), mode, etc.

 

[chrysalis]

using a caddy via USB seems more reliable and problem free than ESATA. On servers when a tech puts a drive in a hot plug SATA port I always have to reboot to see the drive. But on USB it shows up live.

 

[nate42nd]

64 bit Windows 7 here. Asus P7P55D-E Pro (Jmicron Esata). I also have used a JMicron based PCI-E contorller on Windows XP 32 bit and Windows 7 64 bit. No problems. On my P7P55D-E pro I also use one of the P55 AHCI Intel ports for eSATA with no problems on Windows 7 64bit. I get sequential read speeds in excess of 120 MB/s.

You shouldn't have any problems with eSATA on that JMB362 chip on your motherboard or using any of the P55 SATA ports in AHCI mode for eSATA.

Of these systems you built, how do you have the eSATA set up? Specifics would help - chipset (including the external drive), mode, etc.

Good idea, I could hook up an eSATA port to one of the other SATA ports. They are all controlled by the P55 hovever.. I have tried AHCI, iDE in the BIOS. I installed in AHCI so they both boot. I am using 3 different eSATA capable drives. One is a Rosewill RX-358 enclosure with a WD 640GB Blue drive inside. I have also used the latest Intel driver. This is why it's tough. This is about all I know to do.

 

[foros]

Any progress?

 

[pjsm1956]

Welland eSATA drive problem solved - for me, at least.

I purchased a Welland EZSTOR eSATA/USB HDD enclosure, and battled with it for days to get it to work. The scanty installation manual was not helpful, and many of the posts on-line show how widespread the issue is. The USB connection worked fine (after working out that the eSATA and USB cable cannot be connected/used at the same time). Eventually I went back to first principles, and assumed that the manual cannot be correct in every situation.

Preparation:
Check Device Driver: if one for your drive isn't seen, then try to update drivers. It may work. If you cannot see the drive, my understanding is that checking with Computer Management is a waste of time.
Check Computer Management to see if the drive is visible. If not, you probably need to update drivers.
Check to make sure that the darned power supply is ON. (Working lights on the enclosure help).
Check (listen) to hear/see if the HDD is moving. Mine is too quiet to hear over the background noise.
If there is flicker (of light) on the HDD enclosure light, then the computer internal eSATA connection inside has power, but HDD is not recognized. This was the key test and everything was easy after this.
My computer has no specific settings for eSATA in the BIOS, it wasn't set for IDE drives, and I don't want a RAID setup, so ended up changing nothing in BIOS.
I didn't have to change my Registry settings. Some people have had to manually change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci to zero(0).

My solution:
Check all of the above.
Ignore the manual that says no drivers are needed, and get a new one for your drive. It may take some searching to get the right driver.
I used Western Digital's site to get a new WD SES Driver (all my drives are Western Digital 3TB Red as I never turn my computer off and the WD Green drives don't always cope with running all the time - downside is that there is less automatic error connection, as Red drives are designed for RAID). The web site for download was: WD SES driver download and instructions for recovering the WD SmartWare installer | WD Support

I ran WD SES Driver (64-bit) installation, waiting a minute, and the eSATA drive worked.

 

[cornemuse]

Maybe I'm missing something, but, I have two computers (XP-Pro 64 bit) with esata cables plugged into a sata port on mobo. I have a toshiba laptop w/W-7 & a built-in esata port. Never have troubles with them. Occaisonally, I have to rescan disks with 'disk management' or 'device manager' when swapping.

The 2 desktops I run esata to an internal drive bay sitting on the desk. <- Have a seperate P/S for it, 3 1/2" drives in bay tray or 2 1/2" & 3 1/2" bare drives fit in the bay with a piece of plexiglas to get correct height. The bare drives work just fine.

The Tosh just always works fine.

(I thought the 'e' in esata just meant 'external')

-c-

 

[pjsm1956]

eSATA

The "e" does mean "external", plugged into a specific eSATA port, not just run outside the machine.