eSATA cable problems

[turtle1]

I just bought a Western Digital My Book Premium ES Edition with USB 2.0 and eSata connections. I have tried two different eSATA cables and both are very loose fitting on both the My Book as well as the mobo (Asus Striker) connector end. Any movement of either causes the cable to come loose. Please tell me this can't be correct. I am so far forced to use the USB connection. The USB cable is snug and works well. I would rather use the eSATA interface for obvious reasons.

Are there different eSATA cables? Am I using the wrong ones? Again, I have now bought two eSATA cables from two different suppliers and both do the same thing.

 

[phillyman36]

I just got the 320 gig My Book prem., i got the esata cable from newegg and my cable isnt loose it stays in place. I paid 11 bucks with shipping. Are you sure you are pushing it in all the way. When i attached mines the first time i didnt put it on all the way and it was a little loose.

 

[turtle1]

Pretty sure it is on all the way. Does it "click" or anything when it locks in place? I will try pushing it on harder when I get home tonight.

 

[ekandos]

Ihave the exact same problem, any solution?

 

[JerryF]

You need to trim back (cut back) the plastic insulation on the eSATA cable's plug so the metal part of the eSATA plug will go further into the socket on both your PC and the external disk. The eSATA plug cable's pins are NOT connecting to the pins on your PC's connector.

JerryF
_____________________________

I just bought a Western Digital My Book Premium ES Edition with USB 2.0 and eSata connections. I have tried two different eSATA cables and both are very loose fitting on both the My Book as well as the mobo (Asus Striker) connector end. Any movement of either causes the cable to come loose. Please tell me this can't be correct. I am so far forced to use the USB connection. The USB cable is snug and works well. I would rather use the eSATA interface for obvious reasons.

Are there different eSATA cables? Am I using the wrong ones? Again, I have now bought two eSATA cables from two different suppliers and both do the same thing.

 

[sipski]

I have the same problem too! I even cut the insulation off the eSATA cable by a cm, but it's still loose and connection keeps dropping intermittently. Does anyone have any idea what is going on - it is so annoying to find the cable so loose after paying the extra for eSATA?.

 

[Guest]

I have a MyBookII 1TB with eSata - I have tried three cables and Western Digital even sent me a cable to try. Same thing happens with them all - the drive lasts a few hours then is lost - as I was using this for Windows Home Server its a pain. Now WD have told me I can only have a refurbished drive for a brand new one cos it's over 30 days - even tho it's took them 30 days on their support site to get to the root of the problem. I wouldn't touch their drives with a barge pole now.

 

[G2Jim]

FYI - It still could be the eSata cable. I just got a new My Book Home Edition 1TB external drive that worked fine with USB2 or Firewire, but no luck initially with the eSata cable I bought (doesn't come with the HD unlike the other cables). I used a small scrap of paper to measure how deep the eSata socket was (marked with a pencil line to the edge of the case), then carefully trimmed back the shoulder of the cable connector to that same depth, both on the HD and computer ends. Now it works great, and the connections aren't loose like they were at first.

 

[Guest]

Not sure if it make any difference to you all, but I would avoid using the mybook drives. They consistently fail. I, and many of my co-workers were lured by the price only to have the cases drop connections sleep via the built in mybook software corrupting our files and ultimately losing our work. I've had to tear out the physical drives and put them into reliable cases. No roblems since then with e-sata or other mybook issues.

 

[QWERY1]

Newegg has some problems with their generic Rosewill brand cables they are not following sata organization standard and they will not work on all systems, try a better quality cable at stores like satadrives.com and or satacables.com

yes it helps to pay for the triple shielding if you are in a RF noise induced area (like under a desk or running cables by a back-up power supply)

 

[andrewlang]

I would recommend buying some high quality eSATA cables instead of getting the generic ones from Newegg or eBay.

 

[headbanger22]

I just received my eSATA cable today from ebay cheap as dirt and wondered why it would not work with my 1TB western digital, then a post mentioned about checking BIOS and changing configuration whatever, but right after that one mentioned about cheap cords do not fully engage with the hard drive. so i tried pushing my cable harder into the drive and sure enough my laptop picked it up right away. So to simply solve the problem i just trimmed back bout 1 millimeter of plastic from the end and voila! as we speak i am backing up about 100gb of torrents takin about 30 min it says. Not entirely sure if it should be faster then that? anyways i'll check back in a bit to see if any response

hopefully this will help somebody

 

[RangerGord666]

More for the discussion:
- have a Rosewill RX-358B external enclosure (eSata to eSata) with WD 1TB drive
- used the 3’ cable that came with the Rosewill and it worked OK even though the connections seemed “loose”, i.e., they didn’t “snap in”
- needed a longer cable so bought a Startech 6’ eSata to eSata
- using Startech cable I would lose connections with the system. Have to reboot and reset the cables. Pain in the A
- so I compared the two cables and hopefully you can see in the attached images
- the Startech connector is noticeably longer than the Rosewill
- What gives? I though Startech was a top notch cable and that’s why I buy them.
http://s717.photobucket.com/albums/ww178/RangerGord/th_eSatasidebyside.jpg
http://s717.photobucket.com/albums/ww178/RangerGord/th_eSataend2end.jpg
http://s717.photobucket.com/albums/ww178/RangerGord/th_eSatabutted.jpg

 

[97bm]

I agree with JerryF. Had the same problem with a WD esata 1TB drive and an HP DV6 laptop. Lots of experimentation and finally fixed it by trimming back a couple of mm of the plastic shoulders on each connector of the esata cable.

A few mechanical measurements and it became clear that the connectors weren't going in deep enough. The cable was a Belkin of reasonable quality.

No problems now, but the drive is only recognized if it's connected at boot-up.

The core of the problem is the external casing of both the laptop and the WD drive enclosure. They're thick and keep the cable connector from going in far enough. Perhaps manufacturers of the cables or the esata devices are sloppy, or the standard isn't specified well enough. I've seen cables with substantially different dimensions in terms of the amount the connector extends from the plastic shoulders.

 

[Mark Harrigan]

I had exactly the same problem. My WD drive simply would be recognised in BIOS or in Windows (vista 64 bit). But the drive (1TB MY Book Home) worked fine under USB. I updated the BIOS on my notebook and the firmware on the drive - no good.

I then measured the depth of the eSata port on my notebook and noticed it was around 10mm whereas the metal protrusion of the brand new belkin cable was only 8mm.

Shopped around and found a cheaper cable where the metal protustion of the cable (i.e. the unsheathed portion of the cable and hence the depth to which it could go in the laptop port) was just over 1.5mm longer (around 20% more).

Plugged it in and instant recognition. Problem solved.

There appears to be a standard problem regarding eSata cables that the manufacturers need to get together to resolve

 

[sekar1984]

Hello Guys,

As far as this issue is concerned, we have only one solution - "Buy a eSATA cable (any brand), remove 3mm of the Plastic insulation on the cable and try using it. It really works!!! The Problem is - WD is not following the slot depth on their hard drives. The eSATA port in the HD is deeper than the suggested depth, so the eSATA cable is not making a proper contact.

 

[Guest]

What device are you using to trim the hard plastic end of the eSATA cable, and is there any chiping or cracking in the process.

 

[OrlandoReis]

Hi to all, some time as passed and it seems the problem still exists.
I'm having the same problem like everyone here.
MyBook WD 2TB hard drive in my case paid 350 euros for the bloody thing. At home it works more or less ok with the docking station but I have to make sure the e-sata cable is in a certain position and doing some strength agains the drive.
I don't think the problem is on my Dell Precision M4400 laptop connector or on M4400 docking station.
The problem is with the connector on the WD drive.
I bought the drive because i was running several virtual machines in it.
I dont understand, arent there any cabbles that click when plugged in?....
This is getting a bit weird...

Orlando

 

[OrlandoReis]

Ok, trimed a bit off another of the cable on both sides problem was also on the laptop.
Working...

 

[Guest]

You need to trim back (cut back) the plastic insulation on the eSATA cable's plug so the metal part of the eSATA plug will go further into the socket on both your PC and the external disk. The eSATA plug cable's pins are NOT connecting to the pins on your PC's connector.

JerryF
_____________________________

Thanks You've spared me a great headache a simple solution sometimes evades the best of us. I checked bios and device manager not thinking it was just the cable that needed trimming

 

[Guest]

I just bought a startech 2 port internal to esata external slot plate and attached it to my Dell Desktop, but it wasn't recognizing the WD external drive.
Thanks You've spared me a great headache a simple solution sometimes evades the best of us. I checked bios and device manager not thinking it was just the cable that needed trimming
Had to trim away the plastic on the esata cable all the way to the metal before it clicked in to my western Digital 1TB external Hard drive.
I then went to Device manager and scanned for new hardware and it recognized the WD external hard drive without the need for rebooting. Simple.

 

[mdriggs]

I have a WD MyBook Home that I chose in part because it because it supposedly supports eSATA. I find, however, that it is very prone to dropping the connection. I have tried exposing more of the connector, as suggested here, and even a new cable, butstill, as soon as I try to send much data across the interface, the connection is lost. Have updated the drive firmware, but that made no difference. Very frustrating. Works fine with FireWire or USB.

Michael

 

[olivercharles89]

I have a WD MyBook which worked occasionally with the eSATA cable, but was so unreliable it was unusable. After coming across this thread, I trimmed back about 1mm from both of the plugs and now it works like a dream - it just seems really surprising that after buying a cable you then have to take a pocket knife to it! Does anyone know why they don't make cables which fit into the sockets without being trimmed?

 

[wawa]

thanks to whomever advised to trim the eSata cable. I had the same problem and now it works. This saved me from returning drive tp manufactuere
Thanks

 

[jamus34]

I have to agree with this...I was at my wit's end trying to get eSATA working on my WD external and decided to try trimming the cable before going back to USB.

I just transferred at least 50 gig...no hiccups.

I'll give it a good test tomorrow to make sure.