Rescan for HD in Win7?

[DBissett]

I have an external eSata HD which I use for backups every week or two and then disconnect. When I reconnect it's not recognized in Win7 until I reboot. Is there a way get Win7 to rescan for HD's to avoid the reboot? If there is, I can't find it. Thanks.

 

[Nothinman]

In Device Manager there's a rescan option, not sure if it'll catch hard disks since I've really only used it for USB devices. Also, I believe in Disk Manager there's a rescan option. Both of those require that the controller managing the eSATA slot and the driver detect the drive as well, but one would hope they would since that's a major point in eSATA.

 

[SimMike2]

Most likely you installed in "ide emulation" mode, which is the default setting on almost all motherboards. Most of the time, this is perfectly fine, but if you want hot-swappable ESATA drives, you need to turn on AHCI mode for your SATA controllers. This can be switched after Windows install, but you need to find the instructions in other AHCI threads. Generally, with XP it is harder and gets easier with Vista and Win7 to enable AHCI after you install your OS.

 

[RebateMonger]

As SimMike2 notes, the drivers you are running for your eSATA controller aren't the right ones for implementing hot-swap. The drive controller on that motherboard is the Intel ICH10R, so you'd need to switch the disk controller to AHCI mode and install Intel's AHCI drivers. Or install a separate PCI or PCI-E SATA controller that knows how to hot-swap and install drivers for that controller.

 

[Soggysocks]

Have a P5Q Pro Turbo .....had same problem. Switched AHCI on in the bios and all went well from there. Windows will offer to format the drive first and the proceed with the install. It will give you the option for third party drivers during the install process.If you need one you can insert it then.

 

[SimMike2]

All I did was do this little registry setting with my Win7 64bit install, and AHCI now works. Not sure what driver it is using, but it appears to work fine, and now my ESATA drive can be turned on and used after Windows starts. Basically all I did was change the Start key listed below to 0. It was a 3. I could not get the Intel storage matrix drivers to install.

BTW, this is with a Win7 64 that was installed with IDE emulation of the SATA drives. Doing the below registry setting allowed me to switch to AHCI.

Vista 32/64 Windows7 32/64
- Run Regedit (from the command prompt)
- Navigate to "High Key Local Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\msahci"
- edit the "Start" key and change the value from what it is to "0"
- this will tell Vista to check for AHCI on next boot and install the AHCI driver if it is in AHCI mode
- this installs the generic AHCI Microsoft driver and it is really a poor driver for your hardware and you will need the Intel ones to get full performance.


UPDATE:The above was copied and pasted. I don't believe the driver in Windows 7 "is really a poor driver." In fact, I think it is Intel and works just fine. There are ways to enable AHCI to existing installs of XP and Vista also.