Re: external eSata enclosure drive recognition?

Bill in Co. wrote:
Paul wrote:
Bill in Co. wrote:
Addendum.
There ought to be SOME way to narrow this pecularity down to being either 1)
an external eSata HD enclosure problem, or 2) the eSata hard drive itself,
or 3) a BIOS problem, or 4) a windows "communication" problem (in
continually checking the BIOS for connect/disconnect of the external drive).

(or maybe it's a combo of two of the above).

Or at least that's my understanding.

You're missing "hotplug". It takes a combination of the right setting
for the port in the BIOS, and driver to go with it, to get support.
If it is working, then you'd see a "Safely Remove" icon at the bottom
of your Windows screen. AFAIK, a default IDE driver for a SATA drive,
doesn't have hotplug or hotswap capability, and it takes another mode
such as AHCI or RAID mode, to fix it.

Thanks Paul. I did some more reading on this last nite, and apparently one needs AHCI to support this "hot plugging" capability. And since I only have the older Intel ICH9 controller, it isn't supported, nor are drivers available for AHCI from Intel that will update it (although there is an unsupported patch for AHCI at one of the MSDN sites that *supposedly* will allow the standard ICH9 driver to be patched to get AHCI, instead of just IDE emulation of SATA.

If the ESATA port on the computer, is hosted by a separate chip, it
should be relatively painless to fix.

It seems it is not upgradeable with a driver from Intel (I mean for the standard ICH9 controller; I read about that over at the Intel site, and its requirements).

Hot-plugging is mentioned here, in this AHCI article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host_Controller_Interface

Yup, that's one of the articles I read last night - thanks.
I think it also referenced that unsupported AHCI patch (for non RAID Intel controller), too.

Moving the boot drive, from one controller on the motherboard, to
another controller, or to a separate controller purchased and
installed in a PCI slot, may allow making changes to the driver
and BIOS setting. It all depends on where the ESATA port is hosted,
as to how messy the fix would be.

That's what I'm getting, when reading about this some more. It's seems it can be a bit problematic - and a bit risky.

That is why I mentioned a "separate
chip" issue as being easier to fix, as there is no interaction with
the boot drive and its driver, while you're fixing it.

Well, I'm just not sure about the "separate chip" thing here that your mentioning.

The only thing I can tell you is that I evidently have an Intel ICH9 controller on the MB, and NOT the newer Intel ICH9R (etc) series, that does support AHCI and has hot plugging capability (since it is not just an IDE emulation of SATA).

I can see that in BIOS too, since the only selection for SATA is the IDE emulation one. In other words, no AHCI.

(I'm not sure if I can get around this by adding a PCI controller card (to allow for AHCI). But perhaps - but I think it's a bit risky, given what's already set up and configured on the MB (the ICH9).


You could add a card to the machine, if there is a slot empty. For example,
a SIL3132 or other SATA 3Gbit/sec chip, would possibly do the job. Some
are set up as ESATA cards, with one or two connectors on the faceplate.
The SIL3132 has a PCI Express x1 interface, and isn't a plain PCI chip.

You can add a card like that, and install a driver, without having to
do anything to the rest of your setup.

I didn't see mention of the Dell model number of your machine, and maybe
I could look at the motherboard picture, to see what other options are
available.

Paul
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Problem with xorg-x11-drv-i810 on Fedora 10
    ... the driver works just like the Fedora 9 driver. ... Identifier "Intel i830M" ... Graphics Controller] ...
    (Fedora)
  • [git patches] libata updates
    ... All bug fixes except for the one-line Promise PCI ID addition to ahci, ... and the amd74xx.c driver by Vojtech Pavlik. ... pata_efar.c - EFAR PIIX clone controller driver ... + * Copyright 2005/2006 Red Hat Inc, ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • 2.4.27 -> 2.4.28 breaks i810-tco watchdog timer
    ... I've been using the i810-tco watchdog timer driver from 2.4.25 through to ... 0cf8-0cff: PCI conf1 ... Intel Corp. 82801DB Ultra ATA Storage Controller ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • RE: ntbackup"The Files for the Recovery Diskette Could Not Be Crea
    ... on the software side there is only the " intel matrix storage manager" ... This issue is frequently seen when the Intel RAID controller is used. ... problem is probably caused by Intel RAID controller driver iaStor.sys. ... Microsoft CSS Online Newsgroup Support ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: How to find out what is the currently used driver for network card?
    ... Mar 8 07:21:23 graffasrv1 kernel: Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet Driver ... 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER USB UHCI ... 02:00.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 6700PXH PCI Express-to-PCI Bridge B ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)
Loading