Dumb eSATA hot swapping question

Einz

Diamond Member
May 2, 2001
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I recently purchased an external hard drive with an eSATA plug, and after reading up on it, I'm a bit confused. My mobo only has internal SATA plugs, no eSATA plugs. Can I simply buy SATA to eSATA cable (like here), plug in the SATA end into my mobo and the eSATA end into the hard drive and it should work? Will thsi support hot swapping like the USB interface does? Sorry for the idiot questions, my google and wikipedia skills are failing me. Thanks all!
 

Einz

Diamond Member
May 2, 2001
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Originally posted by: hanspeter
Usually it says so in the manual / specs for the chipset.

Hmm... I just browsed the manual and didn't notice anything. For what it's worth, I have the Intel dual core Atom board, D945GCLF2.
 

mooseracing

Golden Member
Mar 9, 2006
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more than likely you will have to boot with teh drive attached and shut off to disconnect.

You need a mobo with esat or an esat card to get hotswap.

The cable and connector work on all mobos, you just have to treat the drive like it is internal.
 

California Roll

Senior member
Nov 8, 2004
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Originally posted by: Einz
I recently purchased an external hard drive with an eSATA plug, and after reading up on it, I'm a bit confused. My mobo only has internal SATA plugs, no eSATA plugs. Can I simply buy SATA to eSATA cable (like here), plug in the SATA end into my mobo and the eSATA end into the hard drive and it should work? Will thsi support hot swapping like the USB interface does? Sorry for the idiot questions, my google and wikipedia skills are failing me. Thanks all!

Your link is broken.

Here are the exact steps I took to get my eSATA drives hotswappable. Originally I couldn't get the drives to show up unless they were on when I booted up. I couldn't swap drives without rebooting either. Vista thought they were internal drives. The key was to have AHCI enabled in my bios.

1) Read http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976 and follow those instructions if you installed Vista w/o AHCI enabled like I did. If you have XP, look for instructions.

2) Enable AHCI on your drive controllers in your BIOS.

3) Make sure you have the RAID driver software installed for your mobo!!! I couldn't get this thing working until I did this. I don't use RAID so I didn't install these originally.

4) Profit. My eSATA drives are now hotswappable. I can turn them on/off whenever I want. I get the "safely remove hardware" icon for all my eSATA drives, just like with USB drives, where I didn't before.

Notes:

My mobo came with an esata bracket with two ports. I plugged those cables into the sata ports on my mobo. I then plug my eSATA drives to the bracket. I also use this which came with an eSATA bracket which I didn't need.

Make sure your mobo/raid controller supports Hotswapping. I heard some INTEL controllers do not, even if you follow all my steps correctly, you're just SOL.

My mobo has 2 raid controllers, Intel and Gigabyte (JMicron?). The Intel controller has 6 sata ports, Gigabyte has 2. I enabled AHCI on both controllers in my bios. I also installed raid drivers for both from my original mobo cd.

I have my eSATA drives hooked up to the 2 Gigabyte ports. I haven't tried them with the Intel ones.

If you can't get the above to work, try this out http://mysite.verizon.net/kaakoon/hotswap/index_enu.htm

Edit:

Basically, if you mobo supports sata, you can use eSATA no probs. Hotswapping depends on your particular RAID controller.
 

hanspeter

Member
Nov 5, 2008
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The chipset itselfs supports it. From the specs:

"SATA Swap Bay Support

Dynamic Hot-Plug (e.g., surprise removal) is not supported by the SATA host controller
without special support from AHCI and the proper board hardware. However, the ICH7
does provide for basic SATA swap bay support using the PSC register configuration bits
and power management flows. A device can be powered down by software and the port
can then be disabled, allowing removal and insertion of a new device.

Note: This SATA swap bay operation requires board hardware (implementation specific),
BIOS, and operating system support."
 

country2

Senior member
May 1, 2001
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What would cause my esata hd case (Thermaltake Max4) not work on 2 of my cases front esata ports (they are known to be working) but will work when plugged into the motherboards esata ports on the back on one case and works with the other using one of those pci esata brackets. Its driving me crazy. Thermaltake said it a AHCI problem but I'm not swapping and one board supports it and its on but the other board doesn't and is setup in IDE mode

One motherboard is a Abit p35 pro running Vista64 (works with back ports but not front port on case and AHCI enabled did not help) other is a Abit p35E which has no AHCI support running Vista and it will not work with the front esata port on my Sonota III case but will work with the PCI Esata bracket with cable plugged into the sata port on motherboard. I would post in a new post but since this topic is titled dumb esata hot swapping figured it would fit in...thanks