I have a Kingwin HDD controller (power swich, actually) with two old HDDs connected to it. If I boot with them powered on they show up in My Computer, then, when I turn them off, they disappear. Exactly as it should be. If I boot with them powereed off and turn them on after the computer is running, they never show up in My Computer. I have an external HDD (FreeAgent) that if I plug it in when the computer is running, it shows up. Why won't the two HDD's connected to the Kingwin do the same?
[SOLVED] Kingwin HDD Controller
- Thread starter Tom5678x
- Start date
ohio_buckeye
Judicious
- Jan 5, 2015
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When you turn on the controller after it’s booted up, go to control panel, admin tools, computer management, and then disk management. Try to assign a drive letter to the drives.
There's a letter already assigned. Are you saying change the letter?
When I first applied power to the computer and fired it up for the first time, the drives were installed, buttons set to give them power, and the computer found them, assigned a letter and I've been using that letter ever since. For what it's worth, I've been using the drives regularly, swapping files, adding data, etc. The system knows they're there.
ohio_buckeye
Judicious
- Jan 5, 2015
- 4,481
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What I suspect is this. The external drive you use with success is connected via either a USB port or some external drive port like eSATA or Firewire. Those ports are operated by controllers on the mobo that normally look for new changes and connections of new devices all the time. When they detect a new item, they trigger the OS to recognize the addition and deal with it.
Your old HDD's, though, are connected differently. I suspect they may simply be connected to normal mobo HDD headers. Such a header will always be polled at start-up by the mobo, so that the OS can recognize all of the attached devices that are functioning properly. BUT if those drives are OFF at initial boot, and turned on later, the standard HDD controllers on the mobo may not be programmed to keep on checking for new devices added. That feature is part of system called "Hot Swapping" that is common on current mobos, but was optional on new SATA ports earlier. I don't think it ever was an option of older IDE ports, if that's what your drives are using. So there is nothing to trigger looking for a HDD that was just turned on while the computer is operating.
Try this. In the search window at bottom left type device manager, then click on that in the window that appears. In that, click on the very top line for your whole computer, then click on Action ... Scan for Hardware Changes. That will trigger a quick re-scan of all active hardware and may find and recognize the old HDD you turned on recently.
Your old HDD's, though, are connected differently. I suspect they may simply be connected to normal mobo HDD headers. Such a header will always be polled at start-up by the mobo, so that the OS can recognize all of the attached devices that are functioning properly. BUT if those drives are OFF at initial boot, and turned on later, the standard HDD controllers on the mobo may not be programmed to keep on checking for new devices added. That feature is part of system called "Hot Swapping" that is common on current mobos, but was optional on new SATA ports earlier. I don't think it ever was an option of older IDE ports, if that's what your drives are using. So there is nothing to trigger looking for a HDD that was just turned on while the computer is operating.
Try this. In the search window at bottom left type device manager, then click on that in the window that appears. In that, click on the very top line for your whole computer, then click on Action ... Scan for Hardware Changes. That will trigger a quick re-scan of all active hardware and may find and recognize the old HDD you turned on recently.
You are correct in thinking that the external HDD connection is via USB, and the internal HDDs are connected to the normal mobo (SATA) headers. The HDD powerconnections run through the Kingwin rather than directly to them. The mobo is an ASUS X570-Plus. When specing out the mobo I wanted, hot swapping was not high on my list so I never focused on that feature, but I think it supports that. If it does, I never tried to look in the BIOS to see if that is enabvled.
I just looked in my User Guide. There's something called Hot Plug in the SATA Connection section that allows the choice between 'enabled' or 'disabled'. That sounds like what I need. I'll dig into the BIOS and see what the default setting is and try enabling the relevant headers (or drives, or whatever) to fix the issue.
If that doesn't work, I think I have two (internal) USB ports available. If I can find an adapter to convert the SATA plugs into USB's, switching the connecxtions to the USB's should work. More work, but now I'm curious.
You might have solved the problem. Th anks.
I just looked in my User Guide. There's something called Hot Plug in the SATA Connection section that allows the choice between 'enabled' or 'disabled'. That sounds like what I need. I'll dig into the BIOS and see what the default setting is and try enabling the relevant headers (or drives, or whatever) to fix the issue.
If that doesn't work, I think I have two (internal) USB ports available. If I can find an adapter to convert the SATA plugs into USB's, switching the connecxtions to the USB's should work. More work, but now I'm curious.
You might have solved the problem. Th anks.
We'll be interested to see how this proceeds. I have high hopes for enabling Hot Swap on existing mobo SATA ports. I have an ASUS mobo (not same as yours). Previously I had an older system, and with it I have an external HDD enclosure containing a 500 GB SATA HDD. I has its own power supply brick, and attaches to the host computer via eSATA, which DOES support Hot Swapping. That older system had a dedicated eSATA port on the mobo rear panel. My new system does not, but current SATA controllers on mobos usually have all the features of "proper" eSATA ports. So I simply got a small adapter that connects to a regular mobo SATA port and provides on a back panel plate an eSATA connector. It is just a cable - no circuits with "smarts" for any conversions. Connected that way, my external drive works just fine - I can turn it on and off via its own power switch, and the computer (Win 10 64-bit OS) quickly recognizes that drive when it's on, no matter when I turn it on.
I was going to provide an update anyway, but since you asked I made time to try the Hot Swap sooner rather than later.
It worked. It took me a minute to find the setting and when I did it was set to disabled. I enabled it, saved the change and tried it. Success! I love it.
And now for something completely different. It takes 20 to 30 seconds from power button push to getting the desktop displayed and the Win 10 music. (I gotta find a way to change that music). Not an excessive amount of time. The majority of that time (15 - 20 seconds) is required before I get the 'push F2 to enter UFEI/BIOS' screen. Is that the S.M.A.R.T process working? Is there value to keeping it enabled?
Good luck with your mobo if you change your configuration and move your HDD to internal and utilize the Hot Swap option. Makes me wonder why ASUS even provides the option. Why don't they just make it hot-swappable and save the trouble of writing code to make it selectable?
Most of the time before the message appears to allow you to enter BIOS Setup is the mobo POST processes. There are a series of "tests" of all the hardware devices on the mobo (e.g., the CPU, RAM, bus controllers, HDD controllers, USB controllers, RGB controllers, etc, etc., then the connected devices (optical drive, HDD's, video card), all just for the basics - is it alive enough to reply with a valid code when asked? The end of that process often is marked by a single "beep" you can hear ONLY if you have a small "speaker" attached to the correct pins of the mobo's Front Panel Header. THEN the mobo can call on the process to boot the OS from the designated source storage device (usually one of your hard drives). Pretty quickly that will load and display the Windows opening desktop, but then it still need to load a bunch of other stuff. You can see some of that as it loads all your desktop icons.
What you describe sounds about normal to me. I think (I never really measured) my older machine did it like that for a long time. Eventually it became bogged down with old software junk, which I intended to resolve by replacing the old Win XP OS with Win 10. But before I could do that my son gifted me with a new computer with a whole bunch of new hardware and Win 10. Because my C: drive (the device I boot from) is an NVMe HDD that is HUGELY faster than a mechanical HDD, my boot time now is very short. The Desktop shows up in less than 10 sec, but it keeps working for a bit more. SOME of that is actually application software like malware protection doing its initial scans as background tasks. So a SSD certainly makes a difference in all storage-related performance times compared to a HDD. Assuming you are booting from an HDD, your time report looks OK to me, especially if you have several HDDs attached. Each of them takes a few seconds during the initial mobo POST process to reply, and later when Windows attempts to open access to each of them.
What you describe sounds about normal to me. I think (I never really measured) my older machine did it like that for a long time. Eventually it became bogged down with old software junk, which I intended to resolve by replacing the old Win XP OS with Win 10. But before I could do that my son gifted me with a new computer with a whole bunch of new hardware and Win 10. Because my C: drive (the device I boot from) is an NVMe HDD that is HUGELY faster than a mechanical HDD, my boot time now is very short. The Desktop shows up in less than 10 sec, but it keeps working for a bit more. SOME of that is actually application software like malware protection doing its initial scans as background tasks. So a SSD certainly makes a difference in all storage-related performance times compared to a HDD. Assuming you are booting from an HDD, your time report looks OK to me, especially if you have several HDDs attached. Each of them takes a few seconds during the initial mobo POST process to reply, and later when Windows attempts to open access to each of them.
Ready for another question? This one is harder than the first.
If I boot with the HDD switches 'on', the HDDs show up and everything is good. If I turn them off and back on, still good.
If I boot with the HDD switches in the off position then turn them on
Thanks for all your help.
If I boot with the HDD switches 'on', the HDDs show up and everything is good. If I turn them off and back on, still good.
If I boot with the HDD switches in the off position then turn them on
Just in case you'rer curious I thought I would let you know about my boot time. I boot from an SSD, not an HDD. From everything I've read the biggest time saving is in moving from an HDD . As you've seen. Moving from an SSD to an M.2 NVIE will only shave microseconds off. I believe my time delay is because unlike you, I did not install new hardware. I have legacy stuff. An OD, two (really old) video cards, oodles of front panel connectors, and a PCIe M.2 adapter. Empty at the moment but I plan to fill it. I have two M.2 NVIE cards occupying the slots on the mobo. I have plans for all those. But, yeah, I imagine it takes the mobo time to go through it's checking process with all that stuff. I have noticed that when I boot with the two HDDs tgurned off, it boots faster.
Thanks for all your help.
If I boot with the HDDs off it boots faster. Not remarkably so, but faster. If you're curious I can put a stopwatch on the process and take measurements a few times for booting in both on and off starting conditions. When I get to the desktop I can turn the HDDs on <big grin for that> and it takes them a few seconds to appear.. You make me wonder if the time they take to show up is equal to the time saved when booting. Again, if you want to know I'll try to measure.
As everything stands now, I'm happy. The Kingwin works the way I wanted it to and the legacy hardware booting delay doesn't really bother me. I'm not yet convinced that getting a newer OD will appreciably reduce the boot time. Or for that matter, would newer GPU's help in that regard? OD's are cheap. GPU's aren't. That, however, raises a different question.
I want to display my computer on my TV. Everything from the desktop, to the stuff I do on a word processor. It's an older TV, not 'smart'. But it does have a PC (or computer, I forget what they call it) port on the back. The TV is 15' feet from the computer. I plan to use the second GPU to feed the TV signal since I cannot find the Crossfire software to enable that function. The GPU's are Radeon 4800 series. I did say they were old. They were good when I bought them and they still work. What I might do is keep the 'second' Radeon for the TV and replace the 'first' Radeon for a newer. I would prefer to hook up the TV using a wireless connection but I plan to watch movies (among other things, like games) that I have digital copies of in my computer. Everything I've read tells me to use a wired connection for movies. That's the question. Is there a good wireless thing that's affordable? It's been a while since I looked, so maybe I should try searching for one again. I'm not hopeful. But I really prefer watching a movie on the larger screen, so I don't want to use my monitor for that, so maybe I'll just create a wired hook-up and be done with it.
As everything stands now, I'm happy. The Kingwin works the way I wanted it to and the legacy hardware booting delay doesn't really bother me. I'm not yet convinced that getting a newer OD will appreciably reduce the boot time. Or for that matter, would newer GPU's help in that regard? OD's are cheap. GPU's aren't. That, however, raises a different question.
I want to display my computer on my TV. Everything from the desktop, to the stuff I do on a word processor. It's an older TV, not 'smart'. But it does have a PC (or computer, I forget what they call it) port on the back. The TV is 15' feet from the computer. I plan to use the second GPU to feed the TV signal since I cannot find the Crossfire software to enable that function. The GPU's are Radeon 4800 series. I did say they were old. They were good when I bought them and they still work. What I might do is keep the 'second' Radeon for the TV and replace the 'first' Radeon for a newer. I would prefer to hook up the TV using a wireless connection but I plan to watch movies (among other things, like games) that I have digital copies of in my computer. Everything I've read tells me to use a wired connection for movies. That's the question. Is there a good wireless thing that's affordable? It's been a while since I looked, so maybe I should try searching for one again. I'm not hopeful. But I really prefer watching a movie on the larger screen, so I don't want to use my monitor for that, so maybe I'll just create a wired hook-up and be done with it.
The small time boot differences are not important, especially if you are happy with them. I'm glad to hear it is working now as you always wanted.
I would definitely go with a wired connection to the TV. For watching videos (either streamed, or from video files), the initial data are all compressed using one of several possible algorithms or CODECS. Those need to be de-compressed into a series of complete frames, at the frame rate and resolution you have chosen. (The choices possible usually are limited by the abilities of your display device, in this case the TV.) Even at 60Hz x 720p, there is a lot of work there, which is done by the dedicated processor and RAM on your video card. But then the final stage is transmission of all that data to the TV, and that's a LOT of data per frame and per second! Moving that data by Bluetooth or even WiFi (which I expect your TV does not have anyway) would not work fast enough, I think.
Check the specs carefully for the TV's input port. The "ideal" current type would be an HDMI input, which can have audio as well as high-res video. Or prior to that, a DVI input might be there, and most of those do NOT have any provision for audio on that signal cable. Hence you'd need to rig a separate stereo audio cable from computer to TV, and ensure the computer is outputting to the correct audio output socket. If the TV is older yet, you MAY have a VGA input for video, and again you'd have to arrange audio as a separate cable. In either of these cases, you need to know whether your video card can provide an output of that type, and ensure the resolution and frame rates of the TV input and video output are matched. And of course, the right cable. VGA on a 15 foot cable MIGHT be a worry - I do NOT remember what the max length of such a connection is supposed to be, but I am using a VGA connection cable of at least 12 feet in out store's POS system.
I would definitely go with a wired connection to the TV. For watching videos (either streamed, or from video files), the initial data are all compressed using one of several possible algorithms or CODECS. Those need to be de-compressed into a series of complete frames, at the frame rate and resolution you have chosen. (The choices possible usually are limited by the abilities of your display device, in this case the TV.) Even at 60Hz x 720p, there is a lot of work there, which is done by the dedicated processor and RAM on your video card. But then the final stage is transmission of all that data to the TV, and that's a LOT of data per frame and per second! Moving that data by Bluetooth or even WiFi (which I expect your TV does not have anyway) would not work fast enough, I think.
Check the specs carefully for the TV's input port. The "ideal" current type would be an HDMI input, which can have audio as well as high-res video. Or prior to that, a DVI input might be there, and most of those do NOT have any provision for audio on that signal cable. Hence you'd need to rig a separate stereo audio cable from computer to TV, and ensure the computer is outputting to the correct audio output socket. If the TV is older yet, you MAY have a VGA input for video, and again you'd have to arrange audio as a separate cable. In either of these cases, you need to know whether your video card can provide an output of that type, and ensure the resolution and frame rates of the TV input and video output are matched. And of course, the right cable. VGA on a 15 foot cable MIGHT be a worry - I do NOT remember what the max length of such a connection is supposed to be, but I am using a VGA connection cable of at least 12 feet in out store's POS system.
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