Hard Drive eSata

[Yangster]

I'm hoping I'm posting in the right section, but I'm a bit confused about eSata. I recently got a 1tg Samsung hd and I've set it up in a Rosewill RX358 external enclosure. The enclosure allows me to use both USB 2.0 and an eSata cable. Using the eSata would allow faster read/write speeds right? So I'm trying to use the hd with only the eSata cable, but whenever I try to turn it on, nothing happens with my OS (Win XP). But if I plug in the usb cable, it recognizes the drive. If I leave the drive on with the eSata plugged in and restart my comp, then the drive is recognized with only the eSata but once I turn it off, I can't turn it on and have the drive be recognized again. I don't get why that is and is there any way to get the drive to be recognized with only a eSata cable and not need a restart every time?

 

[DarkStarr]

Probably need a newer OS for that, not really sure because I believe XP was around quite a bit before esata.

 

[Kougar]

Windows XP does not fully support AHCI, which is required for hot-plugging to be supported. As ya found out, the drive has to be treated like any internal drive which means it must be ready when the system boots to be recognized and initialized by the system. Also the SATA ports must be configured to operate in AHCI mode, not IDE.

 

[Yangster]

Hmm I see. Well that's kind of convenient and annoying at the same time. I've been planning to update to Win 7 for a while now and I ran out of space in my old external, which is why I've been waiting for this drive. But I was hoping to hold out till summer since it's almost here to upgrade and I wanted to backup files periodically instead of leaving it on to back up for hours.

So.. after I upgrade to Win 7 will it be able to recognize the drive with just an eSATA? Or would I have to tweak the AHCI thing you mentioned?

 

[DarkStarr]

Probably still need to set it to AHCI, it provides better performance so why not? It will improve performance on all sata drives.

 

[Yangster]

Ah ok, but how would I go about doing that? Is that hardware/motherboard related or software/os related?

 

[Tharic-Nar]

Usually configured in BIOS under Advanced as part of one of the options for the drive mode, it may be set as RAID but most BIOS's default to AHCI mode.

 

[Kougar]

What Tharic-nar said. Your need to configure your SATA ports for AHCI mode in the Advanced BIOS menu, and it must be configured this way before you install Windows 7. If you change it after you install Windows you will make the system unbootable. (there are workarounds, but it gets lengthy to use them)

 

[Yangster]

So just to get this straight, when I'm ready to reformat, before I update to Win 7, I need to go into my bios and change the setting to use AHCI mode, and after that, I pop in the Win 7 disk and install like normal and everything will run fine?

So basically this option/mode can only be changed/activated when you first build a computer or before a reformat?

 

[DarkStarr]

Well, you can set it after the os is installed but from what ive read it seems like it would be a huge pain to get it back running after doing it.

 

[Kougar]

So just to get this straight, when I'm ready to reformat, before I update to Win 7, I need to go into my bios and change the setting to use AHCI mode, and after that, I pop in the Win 7 disk and install like normal and everything will run fine?

So basically this option/mode can only be changed/activated when you first build a computer or before a reformat?

For Windows 7, yes. Windows 7 has AHCI drivers on the install disc and it will use them if it detects the disk controller is in AHCI configuration.

 

[Yangster]

Hi sorry to bump this topic but I finally got around to reformatting my comp XD I went into the bios and changed the settings to AHCI, but it would not boot from CD, it would just keep blue screening and restarting. But when I changed it back to IDE, it would have the boot from CD prompt. What I ended up doing was setting the "OnChip SATA Type" to AHCI and the "OnChip SATA Port 4/5 Type" to IDE and the "OnBoard GSATA-II Ctrl Mode" (what does this do?) to AHCI.

Basically I'm assuming that my DVD drive would not run under AHCI mode. So my question is, if I leave the bios setting "OnChip SATA Type" to AHCI and the "OnChip SATA Port 4/5 Type" to IDE will it affect anything? Are my drives running under AHCI or IDE (I believe my hd is hooked up to Port 0 and my drive to port 5)? Or are they split between the two; if so, do any of my drives suffer from performance loss?

Is it fine as it is? Or do I have to go back into the bios and change it to all AHCI? And if I do, does that mean my DVD drive won't work? D:

Sorry, I just want to get this cleared up so I don't end up finding out that I have to reformat again later on if I run into problems. Thanks.

 

[Kougar]

Hey Yangster. Each of those controllers you listed is a different SATA controller on your motherboard. You would need to refer to your motherboard manual to see which controllers belong to which ports (and which one handles the eSATA port).

I apologize as I should have mentioned this up front in my original reply, but if you change the controller from IDE to AHCI that controls your OS drive, your OS will fail to boot and just BSoD. This should only be done before a new OS installation, as an OS like Vista or Windows 7 will install the drivers for AHCI automatically during setup. It won't harm anything to do it but the system won't boot until the OS drive's controller is back to the setting that was selected when the OS was originally installed. So the DVD drive should be fine!

Performance isn't really an issue for AHCI unless we start talking about SSDs, because AHCI allows for additional commands to be passed to the SSD that are needed for best performance. For hard drives and DVD drives it doesn't matter except to enable AHCI required features such as hot plugging.

One of those controllers controls the eSATA ports for your motherboard, probably the GSATA (Just a fancy name rebrand Gigabyte uses for the Jmicron controller chip) but again you need to make sure via the manual for your board. If that controls the eSATA port AND you are running Vista or Windows 7, then setting that to AHCI should allow hot plugging for eSATA devices.

Your DVD drive shouldn't have any issue with AHCI or IDE. So with the exception of your OS drive it doesn't matter if IDE or AHCI is selected for any devices unless you're using SSDs. AHCI is generally recommended as it's an improvement over IDE, but again the only reason we got into all this was to allow for hot-plugging support.

For all the hassle it's up to you if ya want to stick with USB 2.0 given that's much more convenient to use, the speed loss is there but the convenience factor makes it a tough choice. And as you found out restarting with the drive plugged in is always an option too, you don't need AHCI for that. But, keeping your OS drive on a different controller than your eSATA port(s) will allow you to change the eSATA controller to AHCI without any further issues. And as long as your new OS install is Windows 7 or Vista then the OS should then recognize and initiate the drive when it is plugged in.