Win7 and eSata?

[dragonash]

ok, I finally put together my monster rig and it runs great.

Except that it seems that explorer likes to error every now and then and restart itself.

Anyway, I have an external HD case that has usb 2.0 and esata on it. Since the motherboard on my new comp has an available esata slot on the outside, why not use it, right?


Well... when i turn on my HD, the HD does not show. I need to restart the computer. When I turn it off, the drive stays displayed.

Does esata not work like usb where I can just turn on/off the harddrive when I want to use it?

edit:
http://windows7forums.com/windows-7-hardware/1684-esata-help.html#post17545

looks like im not alone

[shifty]

I had the same problem with my motherboard. I found that there was some stupid setting in BIOS I had to activate in order to use the eSata port.

Did the eSata port work in any other version of Windows?

[dragonash]

didnt have an esata on my other board when i used vista or winxp.

What setting did you find?

[shifty]

I'd hafta boot my computer into BIOS to find it.
Basically, there was an eSata plug on the back of the machine. In BIOS, under like ... Advanced Chipset Features or something, I had to set the mode of either the SATA port *or* the RAID controller to be eSata (or similar). It was set to something else by default.

Until I did this, the eSata port didn't work.

[shifty]

here, pretty sure this was it:

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?p=4593414#post4593414

i am most positive i had to set 'nvidia RAID function' to eSata or SATA2, then when i rebooted is found new hardware and i had to install the manuf'er drivers.

[dragonash]

ok, here is the resolution.

Since you cant change your bios to AHCI without having lots of trouble (mainly reinstalling the OS), there is a work around

Believe it or not, its from microsoft! Why they would have a work around and not an easy way to do this is beyond me

http://www.ithinkdiff.com/how-to-enable-ahci-in-windows-7-rc-after-installation/