Esata problem on V1S

I picked up an esata Seagate FreeAgent Pro external hard disk to use with my V1S. When I have the drive plugged in I cannot boot the notebook and it will not wake up from hibernation. Also, the notebook will occasionally freeze up for a second when the FreeAgent is being accessed. Please tell me this is a problem with the FreeAgent and not the V1S? Is anyone else using esata successfully?

 

It is either an incompatibility with the driver or a bug in the V1S BIOS (didn't we see a lot of those recently...)

If the HDD has a USB connection, I suggest using that. Unless you're using it for high-performance applications like gaming from the external HDD the speed of the USB should be enough.

 

Hi, you're doing better than me. I bought the same drive (well, a 500G one) and an eSATA to eSATA cable for my G1S & I can't see the drive via eSATA connection. Did you have to enable anything? I couldn't see any BIOS options.

I wanted to use the eSATA connection for the video processing I do. USB works fine, but I bought the drive for the eSATA performance boost.

Annoying.

Steve

 

eSata was a selling point for me to get the V1S. I do some video editing on it and and need to keep the files on the external drive, I think the connection will make a difference. I'm pretty determined to stick with it, I'll try out another drive.

steveVii - I think eSata requires the drive to use its own power supply, that's the only thing I can think of.

 

I have a G1S and FreeAgent Pro 750 connected with ESATA. It is working fine with Vista, XP, and Fedora 7 installed on the G1S. Linux shows that the internal Hitachi disk is using 1.5Gbs while the ESATA Seagate drive is using 3.0Gbs.

I did have one problem booting with the drive but I may have caused it myself.

I found that the first partition of the FreeAgent Pro was marked as bootable, so the G1S would hang during the boot when it tried to find an OS on the ESATA drive. I used linux and fdisk to change the partition so that it was not flagged as bootable, and that solved the problem. I had used this drive on other PC's and changed the partition table, so I don't know if it comes from the factory with the first partition marked as bootable.

Just something to check if it does hang when you boot a G1S with the ESATA drive plugged in.

 

Sounds like that might be it!

That's why it's always good to have the internal HDD as the first boot device in the BIOS...

 

For my V1Jp, I've found that if you are using USB-powered storage devices (ie: MP3 players, external USB hard disks, USB keys), it has a tendency of hanging on startup during detection no matter what. This seems to happen on certain types of desktops as well. (ie: it does NOT hang with my ByteCC eSATA Express card unless I use one of my USB-powered ones with the USB plug, though the drive usually cuts off USB comm when it sees SATA comm).

Is this one of those self-powered by USB drives or one of the ones that have an actual power brick?

 

The internal drive is listed first on the BIOS.

Is there any way to mark the partition as nonbootable? I have looked and searched but not found anything. I'm on Vista Business.

The drive has a power brick, which is plugged in.

Thanks.

 

Mine doesn't hang on boot with the eSATA drive connected - the laptop just can't see it. I also tried another eSATA case+2.5" harddisk+power supply & that couldn't be seen either. I think I have a bad cable or dodgy G1S.

 

If the internal HDD is the first boot device then it's not a boot problem.

 

Hate to ask, but have you loaded the latest eSATA driver from the ASUS site?

 

I have the freeagent pro and you have to press the power button on the hard drive or it won't start. It is on the base of the hard drive and it really doesn't look like a button, but it is! Once you press ite hard drive will light up.

 

Since this was my first attempt to use ESATA, I decided to buy the best ESATA cable that the store had available. I didn't want to have any doubts about the cable in case something didn't work.

Also, are you using a real long cable? I picked the 1 meter size, again because I didn't have any experience with external SATA and wanted to be careful.

I threw away the package, but the cable has this labeled on it:

SERIAL ATA II 2725 E209329 RU AMW 80C 30V VW-1 Serial ATA 26AWG LIAN FENG

 

Hi,

Yes my drivers match the version on the Asus website - 1.17.17.0 as I remember (I checked yesterday).

My eSATA cable has similar text on as the one mentioned - "Serial ATA 26AWG E74020-C AWM STYLE 2725...". It's 1m long. I think I'll buy another to test again.

Not checked my BIOS yet - what version do people have successful eSATA connections with?

 

Can anybody tell me their BIOS version? Asus are telling me to upgrade to 205 for eSATA to work....

 

We have confirmed on c90s that some cable simply do not fit the port and thus the drive would not be dedected. i assume it can be the same on v1 or any other/

 

I have V1S and WD 1T My Book Studio Edition (eSATA, USB and FireWire 400/800). I have bios 301 and Polish Windows Vista 32bit. External drive is starting with system (computer is slowing down with HD) but when I trying put or get from it same files drive is switching off. Windows is writing something about error 0x8007048F : ("Urządzenie nie jest podłączone" / "The device is not connected"). I have tested drive on Asus G1S and everything were OK! Today I bought Xpowaer eSATA II ExpressCard 34 (works on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X) and everything is ok too. What's wrong? I must contact with RMA?

 

I dunno if the WD My Book Studio has the same problem, but I have a WD 1TB My Book Home/Office and I find that the connector on the drive itself is too far recessed into the unit. The cable wouldn't be making good contact and it would come off very very easily (from even the slightest bump on the table). From my experience using eSATA drives, it is more like a design defect on their part. I don't think they even bothered testing it as a unit with the shell on very thoroughly, seeing how they don't even include an eSATA cable.

All the eSATA cables from the other units I have (I have eSATA cables from Antec enclosures, Vantec enclosures, MediaSonic enclosures, and a StarTech cable) and *NONE* of them fit without modification. I had to take a Vantec eSATA cable (of the four types, that was the thinnest) and CUT the connector plastic off so that it would go in all the way. An eSATA connector is supposed to fit snugly in place and it doesn't do that until you modify the cable, IF you can even modify the cable since some of them use really thick plastic.

On an other system I had, it wouldn't work properly unless the computer was started up with it connected and detected in the BIOS. Otherwise it would turn itself off.

 

some of the cables on esata drives are too long. Rather the actual plug. on the c90s we fixed the issue by cutting off a mm of the tip of the plug