Hi. I have numerous portable hd's for storage, and backup purposes. Some of them have a connection for E-sata. I don't have a dedicated E-sata port on my MB, but I was supplied with an adapter plate, that I can attach to a spare sata port, to convert it. So I connected the adapter plate, and connect the drive to it. I know the port has to be activated in the BIOS. When it is, when I turn the computer on, and the device isn't turned on, I get a message saying there is no device attached to the port, but it does give me the option to continue. So it seems the only way the harddrive is recognized, is if I power the unit on, let it do it's thing, then turn my computer on, and it's recognized. My question is, is there another way to have the drive recognized, while the computer is still on or am I stuck with rebooting the computer? Thanks.
E-sata help please
- Thread starter miniboss
- Start date
A long time ago I had to use a floppy to load a sata driver on a board with that connection, could that be the same problem you are having. That was with XP install
Which SATA driver are you referring to? The hard drive enclosure came with a mini cd but the drivers are only for WIN98, or earlier, not required for XP. Currently my boot drive is a SATA drive, so SATA works on my system, so I guess I have those drivers installed. Must be part of the chipset software. The other thing that sucks is that there is no easy way to unmount the drive like you can unmount a USB drive. From What I've read, you just wait until all drive activity has stopped, then just turn the unit off. Thanks.
Is the port you are using for the external drives set to AHCI? Strictly speaking, eSATA should be hotpluggable, but some cheaper or older ones may not be.
You should be able to get a e-SATA PCI card to plug into the Mobo. I have one that came in a Mac that I bought but you probably need one that is PC specific. As far as I know it should be plug and play with a PCI card.