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Steven HarmanSteven Harman is a passionate developer who believes that writing great software isn't just a job, its a craft.

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Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice

Tonight I wasted several hours troubleshooting hardware/driver issues with my development box - a fully loaded Dell OptiPlex GX620. I've been fighting with this particular machine since the day I got it.

Recently it's been freezing up, the USB controllers malfunction at random times, it hangs during boot (before the OS even starts loading), and all kinds of other fun stuff.

I've already upgraded the BIOS to the latest available version, released back in December 2006, and applied all relevant firmware and chipset driver updates. Oh, and I'm running Vista Ultimate 32-bit... though I had the same hardware issues when running XP Pro on this box.

eSATA doesn't play nice either

Vantec NexStar 3 A while ago I upgraded my boot drive to a 10K RPM Raptor drive. As I already had a 500GB secondary drive in the rig I was left with an extra 160GB SATA II disk burning a hole in my pocket. Being the geek that I am I picked up a Vantec NexStar3 eSATA & USB 2.0 drive enclosure so I could make use of the extra drive.

One of the nice features of that particular enclosure is the SATA to eSATA bracket that comes with it. The bracket allows you to convert an open internal SATA port into an eSATA port that you can use with the enclosure's eSATA interface. Sweet!

Anyhow, I put it all together and fired it up. The enclosure worked like a dream when hooked up via the USB interface, but the eSATA fell flat on it's face. Anytime I connected the enclosure via the eSATA interface and the bracket my box would hang during boot up - before the OS started loading. This told me it was a BIOS and/or firmware issue.

I tried all of the BIOS settings, SATA cable and port combinations, and even some Black VooDoo and still couldn't get my machine to boot when that enclosure was attached via eSATA.

Moving on

Several months, and many phone calls to Dell Tech Support later, I finally found a solution workaround. The whole time I was assuming it was an issue with my PC's hardware and never thought to call Vantec to see if they had anything to say about it.

After a 5 minute chat with a very knowledgeable tech support guy I had an answer to my problem. And apparently this is a very common problem.

What's the deal?

The SATA II spec calls for some very fast transfer speeds which in turn require a very strong signal between the controller and the drive. However, many of the early SATA II compliant controllers don't produce a strong enough signal to overcome the loss that occurs when connecting to a drive through multiple SATA cables plus the SATA to eSATA bracket as I was using.

To remedy this I cracked open the enclosure and set the SATA II drive to operate at SATA I speeds (via a jumper setting). I then went into my machine's BIOS, enabled the necessary SATA port, connected all of the wires, powered on the enclosure, and rebooted.

Transfering to eSATA drive

And...?

And it worked! It really freaking worked! Granted, the drive is only running at SATA I speeds (1.5Gbps max) as opposed to the SATA II speeds (3.0Gbps max) it is capable of, but that's still a hell of a lot faster than USB 2.0 and still faster than an internal PATA drive.

The upshot

If you are having trouble getting your SATA II drive enclosure to talk to your machine, try running the drive at SATA I speeds and see if that helps.

Oh, and there is one other thing you'll want to check out - if your mobo and BIOS allow for SATA Hot Swapping be sure to enable it. This will allow you to connect and disconnect your eSATA device at any time, just like with USB devices. Otherwise you'll need to be sure to have the eSATA device connected and powered up before firing up your PC.

Unfortunately Dell doesn't think it's important to support eSATA hot swapping, so for now I'm stuck in the second boat... having to remember one more thing that I shouldn't.

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What others are saying.

# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Steve Harman
Jul 11, 2007
Oh, and for the record I'm going to go back to building my own boxes again. Jeff has inspired me to get my hands dirty again.

That, or if I'm flush with cash I might go with a MacBook Pro. :)
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Simone
Jul 11, 2007
U gotta get a MacBook Pro
# Setting a Default Browser for Visual Studio
Gravatar StevenHarman.net
Aug 02, 2007
Setting a Default Browser for Visual Studio
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Kuba
Aug 10, 2007
Holy macaroni - I've wasted whole evening yesterday, and good part of night fighting with very similar symptoms. I've almost banged my head on that external drive supposing it was its fault.
I will check it with changed mode to sata I, and if it works - pal I owe you a nicely chilled big, fat beer with 1 inch foam. :D
(and just for other poor souls like me - my MoBo is Gigabyte k8nf-9 ultra).
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Kuba
Aug 10, 2007
It's me again. You inspired me to check it on my older mobo Abit IS7 - and???? Tadaaa it works, flawless.
Everything's clear now. Abit has only sata I (150) capability. So everything is as you wrote.

thx again.
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Steven Harman
Aug 10, 2007
@Kuba: So glad that my pains saved your... err, well saved you a little bit of pain. :) I understand how frustrating setting these eSATA drives up can be - and the whole too weak a signal for SATAII is poorly documented, at best.

Hopefully others will find this post and save themselves the trouble that we've both had to endure.

Oh, and I'll take you up on that beer sometime. I never turn down a free brew!
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Ken Kan
Sep 04, 2007
Very good to hear.. I have a Dell Precision 390 for that.. i guess it is more to do with the motherboard and any BIOS update from Dell won't fix it?
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Steven Harman
Sep 05, 2007
@Ken, I'm not sure I follow what you're saying 100%... but the gist of the post is that most early SATAII controllers simply weren't built with eSATA in mind. That is - they weren't built to output the required high voltage signals that are typically required when connecting an eSATA device.

So in that case, yes, it is an issue with your mobo/controller and not with the BIOS.

However, if you were referring to the hot swapping issue, then yeah it's really just a BIOS upgrade that Dell doesn't think it's customers need.
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar brian
Nov 06, 2007
Help.. I have the same issue -with a M2A-VM MOBO.. which is odd since my last (5yr old) board worked fine with both esata Nexstar drives connected,
I've updated everything hoping to see the esata drive, bios is all auto - oddly AHC1 setting locks up during boot up esata pluged or not (why cna't I have hot swap on?) so that's off, and nothing can find it the drive,,

I've opened the drive and can't find any jumpers to change, if this is the only route I was hoping for full speed, any help would be great..cheers B
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Penpen
Nov 09, 2007
i have the same problem but i used a pci to sataI controller and im on winXP. I changed my hdd (WD5000AAJS) to sataI but it still doesn't show up. any ideas?
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar brian
Nov 11, 2007
How do you change teh Jumpers on this drive ??? Please.

Thanks B
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Steven Harman
Nov 11, 2007
Brian,
Drive jumpers specific to each brand and model... so you'll have to look up the specs on your particular drive.
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar brian
Nov 11, 2007
Hey Steven,

I have the exact drive we are discussing here this is the reason for the post,, I have one in black and one in blue NST-360SU-BK.,

That's why I was wondering you have said the only way to make it work is to change the jumpers on this drive I can't find a thing to change,, any help would be greatly appreciated,,

Cheers B
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Steven Harman
Nov 11, 2007
@brian, I think we're just talking about different things.

When I say that I set the drive to run at SATAI speeds, I mean that I changed the disk drive itself to run at that speed... I didn't make any changes to the enclosure. So the jumpers settings you need to change are on your HDD, not on the Vantec enclosure.

Does that help any?
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar brian
Nov 16, 2007
Actually the minute after I read my last post I understood what you meant - and didn't have a jumper kicking around to try the pins WD suggests so I put them back together so that I can get 3.0G since it's on a network needs it so when I get away from the day job I'll be picking up a PCIE card with hopefully a couple ESATA and atleast one SATA connection,, any suggestions on a good cheap one ??

Cheers Brian
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Craig
Nov 30, 2007
I recently just purchased a Rosewill External eSATA enclosure, along with a Seagate 7200.11 SATA II, 500GB, 32MB Cache hard drive. I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate, 3GB RAM. My laptop has built in eSATA. I'm using the eSATA cable that came with my enclosure. I'm having similar problems you're having. Firstly, my dad transfer is maxing out at around 20 MB/s. (My laptop supports eSATA hot-swap.) Whenever I plug it in, my computer lags for a bit. If it's turned on when I turn my computer on, booting the computer makes me wanna throw my laptop against the wall. But if I turn it on while it has been already booted, there is just a 5 second lag.

Now, I tried transferring over a 3 GB folder from my internal SATA II 3 gb/s 120 GB hard drive in my laptop to my external one, via eSATA. Every time, it would go to "50 minutes remaining," and then my computer would lockup completely. I'd have to do a hard shut down. This happened twice. I don't know what to do.

**I do have the jumper removed from my Seagate 7200.11 hard drive, but that really shouldn't matter.

Would it be better if I used a shielded high-quality eSATA cable (made by SIIG)? Would my problems go away? Or do I have to do as you have done, reverting back to putting the jumper in, and use it at 1.5 gb/s.

Thanks!
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Craig
Nov 30, 2007
*I made a mistake on my above comment. I meant to say "50 seconds remaining," not minutes.
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Steven Harman
Nov 30, 2007
@Craig, using a high quality shielded cable may help some. But I doubt that's your issue as your PC is able to recognize and connect to the external drive even when it's running at SATAII speeds.

The lag when hot-swapping the disk while the computer is on is probably a bug... but 5 seconds isn't too bad I suppose. Be sure to get the latest Firmware for you motherboard, that might help.

As for the lockup issue you're seeing... that might be related to the file copy/delete issues that are being fixed in Vista SP1. There are also a couple of Hotfixes (KB938979 and KB938194) that you can get and apply on their own that should help fix your problems.

Let me know what you find out and/or if you find a fix.
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Craig
Nov 30, 2007
@Steven, I already have those updates installed since a few months ago. :\

My laptop is an ASUS G1S. Maybe you can find something? I mean, the hard drive runs great, it's just it freezes, and I cannot copy folders for a small period of time. If I keep in plugged in without any data transfer, or just folder creations and whatnot, my laptop doesn't lock up.

How much different will I see by using a high-quality shielded cable? And I don't think it's my enclosure, because everyone seems to be happy with it, and it got a 9.5/10, with eSATA speeds nearly as fast as internal SATA. I would also like to know why I'm only getting 20 MB/s.

Thank you!
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Craig
Dec 01, 2007
I don't know what I did, ^^, but I had turned indexing off, and reformatted the drive. The lag still occurs if I boot with it on, or when the computer is on, however. I do not have the jumper in, and I just copied over a 45 GB folder with 415 files, and it peaked at 39MB/s and the speed ranged from around 36 - 39MB/s. And it finished without locking up. Strange.
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Val
May 05, 2008
Just my 2c on eSata...

eSATA device is not as easy to setup as USB device!

In order for hot swapping to work you must enable AHCI feature in your BIOS.

When I enabled AHCI my Windows XP was crashing. So I went with reformat and loaded AHCI driver. After Windows was installed, I still was unable to get eSATA to work. All drivers were loaded, I had no question marks. Everythign was running perfectly, but eSATA still wasn't working. To go more deep now, eSATA was connected to SATA ports controlled under Intel's ICHR9 controller, so I switched the wires to Gigabyte SATA controller and everything started to work. Still, I am a little uncomfortable with eSATA, when I turn on eSATA device my PC freezes for like 3 seconds.

My enclosure(s) are Antec Veris MX-1 with 1TB drives.
My motherboard is Gigabyte DS3R motherboard.
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar attakorn
Jun 06, 2008
hmm..I'm running a SATA drive internally but with hot swap (odd I know :p) and I also get the 5 seconds freezing when I turn on the hard drive with the SATA cable plugged into the mainboard. However, if I do not plug the SATA cable in and turn on my HD, windows doesn't freeze and if I plug the cable in after the HD has turned on, it ALSO doesn't freeze! Any ideas?

OS: Windows XP SP2
HD: Samsung F1 750GB 32MB cache
MB: Gigabyte 965-DS3 (plugged into JMicron's controller for AHCI)
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar samy
Jun 12, 2008
Thank you very much for the tip. This solved my problem for which I was trying for the last week
# re: Hardware Problems: My eSATA + SATA II Enclosure Won't Play Nice
Gravatar Jase
Jul 07, 2008
So... I think my problem is kind of unique. I'm running a 750GB Samsung Spinpoint F1, w/ 3GB transfer rate on an Antec Veris MX-1 that I formatted on a XP Pro-SP2 box. Now I can only access this drive when I connect it to this computer and re-start the computer. I've tried it on other machines, (2 laptops, 3 desktops running on XP home all the way to Vista) and the drive will be recognized as new hardware, but not accessible. Do you think this is a jumper problem, or the fact that I formatted the drive externally in this case? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!
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