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ESATA drives in WinXP without AHCI, how are they handled?

B

bgc99

Senior member
How would an ESATA drive be treated by WinXP if the drive was powered up after XP boots?

Would that be treated the same as how swapping and require the external drive to be powered up before the PC is booted?

Also, how would the ESATA drive be treated when the sytem was shut down?

Thanks,
BGC
 
It depends on the disk controller and the controller drivers.

As I understand it, an Intel disk controller in IDE Emulation mode won't recognize an eSATA disk unless it's connected and powered when booting Windows. And if you disconnect or de-power the disk, it'll freeze Windows.

But there are other disk controllers that can handle eSATA and don't use AHCI drivers.

I have lots of experience with Silicon Image SATA/eSATA controllers and those handle hotswapping in XP/2003 just fine. Like some other SATA/eSATA controllers, they don't give you a "Safely Remove Hardware", but you don't need that to remove the disk as long as you know it's done writing.
 
The proggy HotSwap! allows scanning for newly attached drives (if not automatically detected) and for safe removal with spin-down. It works with Intel and Silicon Image controllers, at least.

http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm

eSATA is just a shielded interconnect. The drive behaves no differently.
 
I use eSATA drives on several machines for backup. One is on XP Pro, and I can turn it on and off as needed. That is handled nicely by the Promise SATA PCI controller installed. It works just as Auric says, but w/o any extra program.
 
Mobo is an Asus M4A785TD-V EVO, with AMD SB710 southbridge that supports 1 ESATA port.

This drive would be for backup on a pc I built for my parents, so I need it to be as simple as possible to use.

It would be connected at all times but might be powered on/off while the pc was already on, so I just want to make sure it would work. Otherwise, I might be better off going with a USB external drive instead.

Thanks,
BGC
 
If you use a Vantec NexStar 3 case, you can get both eSATA and USB 2 ports. That way you're covered both ways.
 
I looked at that one a while back. I think alot of the ext. enclosures that have esata also have usb. But if I go usb, it may be cheaper to get one of the basic ext. drives from the HD manufacturers. I just want a drive, not one with the builtin backup software.

BGC
 
it may be cheaper to get one of the basic ext. drives from the HD manufacturers.
Click to expand...
Do yourself a favor and buy a seperate HD and external case.

If it screws-up you have a fighting chance to retrieve your data without voiding the warranty.
 
Glad to help.

BTW, has anyone tried HotSwap! with other storage controllers? 'Cause the basic functionality is essentially the same as Device Manager/DevCon as far as scan and disable but it does provide spindown which one would expect to be a standard specification.
 
Auric said:
Glad to help.

BTW, has anyone tried HotSwap! with other storage controllers? 'Cause the basic functionality is essentially the same as Device Manager/DevCon as far as scan and disable but it does provide spindown which one would expect to be a standard specification.
Click to expand...

I am trying it out with Dynex (Sil 3132) 2 port e-Sata II PCI-Express Adapter.
 
I've used it with a SiI 3512 and various Intel controllers but those are noted as "supported". So, I'm curious about AMD and such.
 
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