Treat onboard SATA port as an eSATA port (make the HD show up in safely remove h

[MDS566]

I would like to set up my external harddrive with an eSATA port on the enclosure to connect to a SATA port on my motherboard.

External Enclosure: VANTEC NST-260SU-BK
Motherboard: MSI H55M-E33
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

The motherboard has 6 onboard SATA ports, one of which has a SATA to eSATA bracket attached (bracket came with external enclosure)
AHCI is enable in BIOS of MB
I would like this drive to show up in the "safely remove hardware" list.

(I want to accomplish this without using the HotSwap! program or programs like it.)

Any help on how to do so would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Hawkeye22]

I have the same enclosure, but in a 3.5" drive. I have it hooked up like you do via internal sata to a esata bracket. Mine shows up in the 'safely remove devices" without me having to do anything special. I also have Win7 Ult. x64.

Your mobo's chipset has to support hot swap in order for you to be able to hotswap your external drive.

 

[MDS566]

Your mobo's chipset has to support hot swap in order for you to be able to hotswap your external drive.

I do believe my chipset, Intel H55, supports hot swap. I've read a few posts from people with the same chipset just different mobo that say it does support it. Have not however found a solution for what i want.

Not that it matters much, what chipset do you have?

 

[Hawkeye22]

Not that it matters much, what chipset do you have?

I have the intel P45 with ICH10R southbridge. I have an older E7500 C2D processor.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Bad news and different news.

First, eSata is not simply a matter of a connector, although ignorant hardware vendors will sell you a bracket to present an onboard SATA port as an eSata port on your back panel. The voltage ranges are different, with eSata having a higher minimum transmit potential and a higher minimum receive threshold.

Asus, a company that I respect greatly, provided such a bastard bracket with my latest mobo. I would not use it. Period.

Now the different news. I use removable drives a lot. I have ten sitting in an anti-static case in my home office. I just don't use eSata. I like racks for bare drives: http://kingwin.com/products/cate/mobile/racks/kf_1000_bk.asp .
A drive attached to any port on my motherboard is hot-swappable, but I had to do two things to make that possible:
1) Upgrade to Windows 7
2) Use the AHCI mode for the SATA controllers, instead of the default IDE mode. This is set in the BIOS, and if you change it after installing your OS you won't be able to boot (there is a way to fix this easily in Win7, and a very dangerous way in XP).

Even with Win7, my drives did not all show up on the Safe to Eject list until I changed the mode to AHCI. Even with AHCI mode, only one drive, on the separate JMicron controller, showed up on the Safe to Eject list. Both Win7 and AHCI were needed, at least in my case, to make the ports hot-swap.

And it had a very interesting side effect: My boot drive shows up in the list of ejectable devices! I've never tried ejecting it, though.

Edit: My apologies; you already posted the OS version and controller mode! So my second block of answers should be irrelevant. Easy test: Click on the Safe to Eject button, and see if you see all your hard drives. If you don't, than I am way off in left field for some reason.

I still stand my my recommendation of not putting an eSata connector on an SATA port. The signal standards are different, and success is a matter of random chance.

 

[Hawkeye22]

And it had a very interesting side effect: My boot drive shows up in the list of ejectable devices! I've never tried ejecting it, though.

Windows will not allow you to eject any drive that has file handles open. Normally it will ask you if it's ok to close all open handles before ejecting. If it's the OS drive, it won't let you eject it at all even though it shows up in the list.

 

[MDS566]

Easy test: Click on the Safe to Eject button, and see if you see all your hard drives. If you don't, than I am way off in left field for some reason.

My drives are not there. My goal is to get them to show up there so that i can safely eject them.

 

[WyomingKnott]

My drives are not there. My goal is to get them to show up there so that i can safely eject them.

Sorry. You've gone beyond me.

 

[FireWire2]

I would like to set up my external harddrive with an eSATA port on the enclosure to connect to a SATA port on my motherboard.

External Enclosure: VANTEC NST-260SU-BK
Motherboard: MSI H55M-E33
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

The motherboard has 6 onboard SATA ports, one of which has a SATA to eSATA bracket attached (bracket came with external enclosure)
AHCI is enable in BIOS of MB
I would like this drive to show up in the "safely remove hardware" list.

(I want to accomplish this without using the HotSwap! program or programs like it.)

Any help on how to do so would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Any SATA/eSATA device can be hot plug and eject in Windows, as long as it's not a OS drive

It may not a one click solution, but it works.

Here is how:
1_ Plug in the drives
2_ Go to Drive Manager - Select Disk drives - Select Action -> Scan for the Hardware change - the inserted drive will show-up with seconds

To eject
1_ Go to Drive Manager - Click to the "+: sign of Disk drives - Right click the to be eject drive - Select the Uninstall Option - Windows does it magic about (less then 30sec)
You drive will disappeared
2_ Unplug it

That's it

Hope this help

 

[FireWire2]

Bad news and different news.

First, eSata is not simply a matter of a connector, although ignorant hardware vendors will sell you a bracket to present an onboard SATA port as an eSata port on your back panel. The voltage ranges are different, with eSata having a higher minimum transmit potential and a higher minimum receive threshold.

Asus, a company that I respect greatly, provided such a bastard bracket with my latest mobo. I would not use it. Period.

...

Are you sure?

Look at the Fig-4 page 12 of External Serial ATA PDF
As the signal concern, if you have the SATA II spec compliances port, which designs with
VDOUT: TX+/TX- differential peakto-peak voltage swing. Terminated by 50 Ohms. min 400mV; typ 500mV; max 700mV.
VDIN: RX+/RX- differential peakto-peak input sensitivity. Min 240 mV

Here is a typical SATA II chip set specification - http://www.siliconimage.com/docs/SiI-DS-0160-C.pdf
Table 2-2 DC Specifications page 10 tells you the signals

Pretty much you can convert ANY SATA port to eSATA with the SATA to eSATA bracket

If your SATA port is SATA 1.5Gb you may not able to use 2.0m cable and it won't support hot-plug
If your SATA port is SATA II/III compliant you can convert to eSATA at many as you want

 

[WyomingKnott]

Are you sure?

Look at the Fig-4 page 12 of External Serial ATA PDF
As the signal concern, if you have the SATA II spec compliances port, which designs with
VDOUT: TX+/TX- differential peakto-peak voltage swing. Terminated by 50 Ohms. min 400mV; typ 500mV; max 700mV.
VDIN: RX+/RX- differential peakto-peak input sensitivity. Min 240 mV

FireWire2

I greatly appreciate the feedback, but I still don't agree in general. From that same document, previous page, with my own emphasis

For motherboards that use a controller designed to support external Serial ATA connectivity, either in the chipset or through an added PCI based controller, the connection choices are either to mount an external Serial ATA connector on the motherboard, or to use a cable from an internal connector up to a receptacle on a PCI bracket, as shown in Figure 4. In this case, it should be noted that the internal cable to the bracket should only be connected to a Serial ATA device that can meet the electrical compliance requirements outlined above.

It may just be stubbornness on my part, but I read that as saying that such a bracket should only be used if the motherboard port meets the ESATA requirements, implying that some motherboard SATA II ports will not.
Also, see the section "ELECTRICAL SIGNALING REQUIREMENTS."

From the least authoratative source imaginable, Wikipedia,

Standardized in 2004, eSATA (e=external) provides a variant of SATA meant for external connectivity. It has revised electrical requirements in addition to incompatible cables and connectors:

* Minimum transmit potential increased: Range is 500–600 mV instead of 400–600 mV.
* Minimum receive potential decreased: Range is 240–600 mV instead of 325–600 mV.
* Identical protocol and logical signaling (link/transport-layer and above), allowing native SATA devices to be deployed in external enclosures with minimal modification
* Maximum cable length of 2 metres (6.6 ft) (USB and FireWire allow longer distances.)
* The external cable connector equates to a shielded version of the connector specified in SATA 1.0a with these basic differences: <snip>

So the specs you quote meet the receive potential requirement (min 240 mV) but not the minimum transmit potential (min 400mV vs. min 500 mV).

In reality, I have tried this myself and it usually works. With my Asus P5P77D Deluxe, Asus actually included such a bracket and cable, and I have great respect for Asus products. But the spec is the spec, and I choose not to depend on a likely-to-work but out-of-spec solution.

 

[FireWire2]

Standardized in 2004, eSATA (e=external) provides a variant of SATA meant for external connectivity. It has revised electrical requirements in addition to incompatible cables and connectors:

That is correct! I think you misunderstand/interpreted.

In 2004 the SATA spec, a eSATA connection is added to provide an external connection. It can not use the L (SATA connector), so the the I (eSATA) was designed, because the L connection does not offers an addition shielding to the connector and cable to minimize the RFI/EMI.

Addition to it, the SATA's signal amplitude is open up both TX and RX to compensate the signal attenuation due to external cable can be as long as 2.0 meter. This new signal amplitude refers to SATA signal

As for your P5P77D deluxe, the eSATA bracket does not work correctly, maybe the MB has a bad capacitor, cold solder, or something makes the impedance of out whack and it misbehaves.

That doesn't mean the SATA to eSATA bracket is out of spec or a bandage solution 😉

Also FYI, there is NO eSATA chip-set, if that is what you are refer to

Edit: Add missing words