Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[Hobbit123]

I have a 500GB SATA drive (ST3500418AS) which operates fine when used internally in my PC or externally connected via USB.  However when I use the eSATA connection on the external case it hangs the OS.  This happens with either Win 7 or Vista.  Other SATA disks work fine in this enclosure.  Also if I boot the PC with the enclosure powered on the BIOS doesn't detect the disk. Has anyone else had this experience with this model drive?

[Cantbecanit]

Here we go then.

 1st up you need to download and install to your C: drive the sata driver, if you use Gigabyte boards I know there is one online, they list two, one does it at install time as a 3rd party driver and the other is an add on to an existing O/S.

GBBX or similar is the driver if it's a Gig board.

Now, before we get ahead of ourselves are you running Vista or XP, if it's XP forget it now as eSata is 2007 tech where XP is 2001 tech, and it just doesn't work at this point, now, assuming you have Vista or 7 the 1st step is to reset your bios to default, after you've done that (re-enable USB key/mouse settings though) boot to C: do not plug in the enclosure at this time, unpack the sata raid driver and install it to C: when this is done reboot and go back into your bios, as I don't know your bios I'll have to work with a Gigabyte 775 one hope your's is similar, enable ahci setting, enable sata port legacy mode if you have it, and finally select ahci from ide/ahci/raid settings, save and exitand boot to C: now plug the usb and eSata leads in from the enclosure and you should see Windows load up the drivers for it and it will work, and you want it to as eSata blisters file transfer compared with USB.

You may then find you have a PCI simple communications device showing needing a driver, tell Windows to find it, and it will go to Intel and get a driver for it, after that's installed you should be 100%.

I'd like an answer to this to say if it worked or not btw so I know I can help others with it should they be stuck in future.

[Hobbit123]

Thanks for your very detailed reply.

The PC is a Dell 531S ant the mobo is an ASUS OEM AM2 M2N61-AX. And I'm running both Vista and Win 7 and the effect is the same in both.

Before I go down the track of installing SATA drivers consider this:

1)  I don't see the drive in the BIOS if I boot with the power on in the external enclosure (ie before any drivers are loaded)

2) It works perfectly with another SATA drive (so I wouldn't think the SATA driver was specific to a type of drive.

I too suspected it might have something to do with AHCI but there's no option to change that in my BIOS (that's not just my observation, others I found have said the same thing) and anyway as i said it works with other SATA drives.

It looks like the drive to me...

[Cantbecanit]

I'm not sure, it says your board is a special for Dell only, and there doesn't seem to be any support from Asus for it *suprise suprise*

The drive won't show up if it's sata unless it has a sata driver for it, this would in your case need to be on the C: drive so you can format the drive, I assume it's not showing up in any PC at this time?

Look in disk management and see if it's there listed, if it is format it and it should perform normal, as for eSata without bios commands I doub't you'll get it to work tbh.

[Hobbit123]

I just did a test.  I rebooted with the SATA disk that works in the enclosure and the enclosure turned on.  I don't see it in the BIOS.  I thought I would, so we can discount that test. I agree that I have to have SATA drivers to see SATA disks but my other two internal disks are SATA and so is the DVD drive and they're all visible and working correctly.

As for going into disk management I would if I could but as soon as I switch on the external enclosure with the seagate disk inserted the PC hangs (sorry forgot to mention that in my original post) and won't 'unhang' till I switch it off.  Besides that the disk is formatted (that's why I can see it when I connect via USB) so I wouldn't expect to have to do anything else with it.

Cheers

[Hobbit123]

I retract what I just said.  I just noticed that I had the external enclosure connected by USB so of course I wouldn't see it in the BIOS.  So this time I disconnected the USB and connected the eSATA cable and rebooted.  Bingo, I see it as the third SATA drive (the first two are internal drives and the fourth is the DVD drive).  So I think that proves it for me.  It's the seagate drive.

[Cantbecanit]

If it's showing up now and there are no strange noises coming from it there's nothing wrong with the drive, with sata drives you have to tell windows they are there 1st time out, they aren't like ide where they are instantly recognised, now it's showing do the format and drive letter and it should all be working as you wanted.

[Hobbit123]

Sorry I wasn't clear enough. I have another drive (hitachi) that works fine in the enclosure.  My test was to see whether it would be recognized in the BIOS before any Windows drivers came into play.  The Hitachi is (and works fine in Windows), the Seagate isn't.

[Cantbecanit]

Info on the board is vague tbh, I can't really find a full spec on it, but I think I know what the problem is now, if your board isn't a Raid chipped board I think that means no AHCI either, which means no eSata I'm afraid.

If you do have AHCI in the bios, it's these setting along with the sata driver that is stopping it, I had the same issues with a dock I bought, once the driver was on C: and the bios was set right all worked, study the mb manual for bios settings, if you can't find AHCI settings I'm almost certain it won't work.

[Hobbit123]

I think you're missing the point.

eSATA does work (as demonstrated by my ability to use my Hitachi SATA drive in the very same dock).  It's only the Seagate drive that isn't recognised.

But quite apart from that if the BIOS doesn't acknowledge that a disk is present then Windows will never see it.  The SATA drivers are a Windows issue.  This is not a Windows issue, it's a hardware issue.  The computer does not recognise there's a drive present.

The PC treats the eSATA connection exactly the same way as other SATA connections.  I have four SATA connections numbered SATA0...SATA3.  I have a disk connected to SATA0 and 1 and the DVD drive connected to SATA3.  I have the eSATA drive connected to SATA2. If I then put the Hitachi drive into the dock and boot it, then go into the BIOS I see the drive in SATA 2.  If I remove the Hitachi disk from the dock and go through the same procedure with the Seagate the BIOS says there is no disk there.  The Seagate has a problem with eSATA.