Hi All
Like a lot of others hereabouts, I've had problems ....using a Freeagent Pro 500 Gb to expand the storage on my laptop, running Vista Home Premium, the USB interface worked fine but the eSATA interface refused to play ball. The laptop could not see the drive when connected in this way.
Now it's working, and the speed is really good.
Part 1 of the solution: make sure you have a good cable connection. See my previous post at
for more details. This is, I think, a mistake by whoever designed the interface module in the drive base.
Part 2 - I must emphasise that this part of the problem is not Seagate's fault. All that was needed was make sure I had the right driver for my interface module. I'll give the details below - they are specific to my system, but may be of use to someone else. All I can say is, this combination works.
The module is an Express Card Adapter, manufactured by Apiotek, part no EC-0003S - see
and purchased from Secure Living Ltd of Northampton in the UK. (www.USBNow.co.uk -More mention of these guys later)
After the usual automated Vista installation, nothing worked.
The driver which DIDN'T work was marked: provider=Microsoft,version=6.0.6000.16632, date=21/06/2006
(These values may be see under
Computer/Management/Device Manager /IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers/Standard ACHI 1.0 Serial ATA controller
and also under
Computer/Management/Device Manager /IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers/ATA Channel 0)
The driver which DID work was not on the disc which came with the ExpressCard - I needed to download it from
One more thing - when you delete the old driver, if you then insert the Express Card, Windows Vista will very likely detect the "new" hardware and put the same old driver back again. (Don't you just want to bang your head against a wall sometimes?)
Better to delete the old driver then run the "Setup" program in the downloaded zip file...
Finally, honourable mention must go to Marcus S. of Seagate support in Ireland, and Sebastian L. of Secure Living Ltd of Northampton,UK for helping me with this problem.
John G.
Message Edited by SalA on
04-16-2008 05:23 AM
