eSATA problems on the P5W-DH Deluxe

[six man]

I recently purchased a Seagate FreeAgent Pro and was hoping to connect it via the eSATA connector on the back of the P5WDH. However, the drive is never detected, either in the BIOS or in Vista.

I've enabled the JMicron controller in the BIOS and I set the SATA mode to AHCI which has been recommended in other threads but nothing is ever detected.

I have the latest driver for the Jmicron controller V1.17.8.1 and vista says that it is working properly and is loaded under "Storage Controllers" in device manager.

I have an IDE drive connected to the Jmicron IDE and it has worked fine when I have the SATA mode set to "Basic".

The drive works fine connected via USB2.0 but I get nothing via eSATA.

Any suggestions? Do you think the eSATA port on the drive is hooped?

Thanks,

Loren

 

[lopri]

Did you try connecting a regular (internal) SATA disk to the little SATA port right next to the eSATA outlet? Does it work?

 

[six man]

Originally posted by: lopri
Did you try connecting a regular (internal) SATA disk to the little SATA port right next to the eSATA outlet? Does it work?

Thanks for the suggestion.

I just gave this a try and it worked. Normally I have my internal SATA drives connected to the Intel controller. However, even with the SATA mode set to 'basic' the internal SATA drive was detected and seemed to be working normally on the internal JMicron port.

Is there any difference between the eSATA port and the internal SATA port besides the physical connector? Is all the signalling the same?

 

[lopri]

It'd be that the Seagate SATA disk (inside the enclosure) is SATA 1.5Gb and the JMicron is 3.0Gb, or vice versa. They should work together in theory, but not always in practice. If you have a SATA-to-eSATA convertal cable, you can try a different disk on the eSATA outlet. (some SATA disks come with jumpers, for 1.5GB/s setting and 3.0GB/s setting) Or it could just be that cable is no good, or the port is dead. There are many possibilities and you just have to take the process of elimination, I'm afraid.

 

[six man]

Yeah, I guess I'll have to try all the various combinations to determine where the problem lies.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Binky]

Like lopri said, try jumpering the drive to SATA 1.5gbs. One of my systems can't see the eSATA drive without that jumper setting.

 

[six man]

Originally posted by: Binky
Like lopri said, try jumpering the drive to SATA 1.5gbs. One of my systems can't see the eSATA drive without that jumper setting.

I don't think I can do that on the FreeAgent Pro. I don't think there is a jumper that is accessible, at least I've never seen it.

 

[Randallizer]

I had the same problem and found the solution. I have the same motherboard but have XP Pro and not Vista. I assuming that you should be able to find the equilivant. I did not have to change the jumpers on my hard disk they are at 3.0.
When I hooked up my eSATA, XP did not see the drive at all either. I went in the Bios and set JMICON to at first AHCI doing this I lost my DVD drive as I have it in the eide port.
Bottom line here is what I ended up with
Set JMICRON to basic
Set JMICRON Sata/Raid Bootrom to enabled
reboot, the Bios saw both drives (the external and DVD drive
Then under XP had to go to computer management - Disk Management you should see your external drive there. You have to activate it and format the drive (I should mention that in my case it was a new drive also)
Voila, windows then saw the drive and is working great.

Hope this helps

 

[six man]

So I think I might have figured out what the problem is, the stupid cable. :disgust:

The eSATA cable I was using was from monoprice.com but in order to do some testing I ordered an eSATA to internal SATA cable made by nGear. I hooked up my external drive to the internal jMicron SATA connector and voila, the drive was detected both in the bios and in Vista. So now I know the eSATA connector on the external drive is ok.

Next I connect an internal SATA drive to the eSATA connector on the back on the P5W-DH and it too was detected right away. Therefore, the eSATA port on the motherboard is working fine.

I reconnect the external drive to the eSATA port with the monoprice cable and no drive detected.

I guess I just need an nGear eSATA to eSATA cable now.

BTW, I was comparing the eSATA connector on the monoprice cable with the one from the nGear cable and the conductors on the nGear cable come much closer to the edge of the connector. The monoprice might not be making a physical connection.

Anyways, thanks for the help in debugging this issue.