PCMech Forums - View Single Post - eSATA

EdP · 03-02-2008, 08:23 AM

Dell Precision T3400, WIN XP Pro, Seagate ST3500641AS drive mounted in Apricorn ez bus eSATA / USB 2.0 case.

SATA board connections 0 and 1 used for internal hard drives, 2 and 3 for internal optical drives, 4 and 5 open. I installed a SATA external slot plate connector in an open PCI slot and plugged it into to internal SATA connection 4. Both SATA connections 4 and 5 were turned OFF in the BIOS, so I turned on 4.

I followed XP's Disk Management procedure to recognize and partition the drive as a simple single partition containing the entire drive, format it as NTFS, but did not assign a drive letter for obvious reasons.

Problems and concerns:

1. Although Disk Management recognizes the new drive, Explorer does not, so the drive is not accessible for use.

2. Apparently the drive is not hot-swappable as are other USB and Firewire drives I own. If the drive is not connected and turned on when I boot the PC, XP displays an error message that Drive 4 was not found "Failed to Detect Drive" and suggests to continue the boot using F1 or go to Setup using F2. If the drive is turned on before the PC is booted, then no error message is displayed, but the drive is visible only to Disk Management. I plan to use this drive as a backup medium that will be stored in another physical location and don't want to have to put up with that message every time I boot.

Thee's no difference if the drive is connected to the USB port or the eSATA port.

** How do I get the OS to recognize this drive?
** Is there a way to make it hot-swappable?

I've searched several forums on this topic, but found conflicting solutions (eg, activate RAID/don't activate RAID) or or solutions that do not pertain to the T3400 (eg, XPS420 problems with its eSATA connector).

Any help will be appreciated.

03-02-2008, 08:23 AM	#1
EdP Member (8 bit) Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Upstate NY Posts: 131	eSATA - Dell Precision T3400 Problem Dell Precision T3400, WIN XP Pro, Seagate ST3500641AS drive mounted in Apricorn ez bus eSATA / USB 2.0 case. SATA board connections 0 and 1 used for internal hard drives, 2 and 3 for internal optical drives, 4 and 5 open. I installed a SATA external slot plate connector in an open PCI slot and plugged it into to internal SATA connection 4. Both SATA connections 4 and 5 were turned OFF in the BIOS, so I turned on 4. I followed XP's Disk Management procedure to recognize and partition the drive as a simple single partition containing the entire drive, format it as NTFS, but did not assign a drive letter for obvious reasons. Problems and concerns: 1. Although Disk Management recognizes the new drive, Explorer does not, so the drive is not accessible for use. 2. Apparently the drive is not hot-swappable as are other USB and Firewire drives I own. If the drive is not connected and turned on when I boot the PC, XP displays an error message that Drive 4 was not found "Failed to Detect Drive" and suggests to continue the boot using F1 or go to Setup using F2. If the drive is turned on before the PC is booted, then no error message is displayed, but the drive is visible only to Disk Management. I plan to use this drive as a backup medium that will be stored in another physical location and don't want to have to put up with that message every time I boot. Thee's no difference if the drive is connected to the USB port or the eSATA port. How do I get the OS to recognize this drive? Is there a way to make it hot-swappable? I've searched several forums on this topic, but found conflicting solutions (eg, activate RAID/don't activate RAID) or or solutions that do not pertain to the T3400 (eg, XPS420 problems with its eSATA connector). Any help will be appreciated.