4 bay USB/eSATA enclosure, USB shows all drives, eSATA only shows first hard drive?

[bobloadmire]

So the USB shows all 4 hard drives in the enclosure, but eSATA only shows the first hard drive. On the site is says. (http://ain.mediasonic.ca/store/product_info.php?cPath=26_51&products_id=150)

"Note: Motherboard's SATA port MUST support Port Multiplier in order for your computer to recognize multiple hard drive if the unit is connectd via eSATA."

I have a brand new AMD motherboard which i looked up, and as far as i could tell supported Port Multiplier. the mother board is an ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=umllTHNRm4IGqnbL&templete=2

so whats going on? I have the esata set to AHCI, and there is no option in the BIOS to disable/enable port multiplier. whats up?

 

[bobloadmire]

and here is a list that lists my chipset.

https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/SATA_hardware_features

AMD SB8x0 ahci AHCI AHCI AHCI yes FBS yes

 

[RebateMonger]

The enclosure manual says:

"If the device (4 HDDs installed) is connected to the PC with
eSATA cable and the SATA HDD icon does not come out in
4, please check if the eSATA interface card supports Port
Multiplier or update the eSATA driver version."

Obviously there's a difference between Command Based Switching and FIS-based switching (which your chipset supports). It sounds like you need to contact Tech Support at the enclosure maker and see if it supports FIS-based switching. Otherwise, it looks like there are many eSATA PCI-E cards from $20 to $40 that claim to support port multipliers.

Edit:
I see the Mediasonic web site reports their enclosure supports FIS:

"Important Note: When connecting via eSATA interface, customer's computer hardware needs to have Port Multiplier w/ FIS-based switching in order to access multiple HDDs simultaneously."