My G50V-A1's eSATA doesn't seem to be working.

Hey, I plug in my external via firewire and it works, but when I plug in eSATA nothing happens. Do I have to go through anything to enable the eSATA or anything? Using a Seagate FreeAgent Pro

 

You might need to go into BIOS to enable the eSATA port. I don't think that Asus' notebooks prohibit hotswap eSATA drives like Dell does, but I would start there.

 

Alright, I'll try it out and report whether I could fix it in the BIOS. Right after my current transfer is over.

 

Says that eSATA is enabled. So I'm stuck again.

 

I use esata on my g50v and the port or connector on the cable is really finicky. If I even brush it slightly it will disconnect and reconnect. If you have another cable maybe try that or try switching the ends around of the one you have. You also might try unplugging the drive's power connection and then connecting the esata and powering it on. Sometimes even tho you plug it in, the disk won't spin up for one reason or another and it will need a power cycle.. that's all the obvious stuff I can think of besides a driver problem etc

 

Can you see your eSATA external with help of 'disk management' ?

 

No, that was one of the first things I tried.

 

Hey, do not take it as offensive, but make sure that when you plug into eSATA port, you did not forget to plug into power line - unlike FiWi eSATA doesn't provide power

 

The eSATA port is definitely flaky but I think it might be something more than just a lose connection or cable. When I updated my stock BIOS from 203 to 204/205, I noticed that it would throw me into the known "2nd reboot" issue, the one where it reboots to unload the second HDD and external devices like the eSATA so that you can do a system restore when you press F9. Anyway, even if I try canceling out of the system restore it keeps rebooting to unload the extra devices and will only load the 1st HDD unless I restore the stock 203 BIOS.

The problem seems related to the eSATA programming of the BIOS though and given that my eSATA drive only boots reliably with the stock 203 BIOS but will still lose it's connection seemingly at random ,sometimes in the middle of a file transfer, makes me think it is a BIOS issue.

I don't have a second eSATA cable to test with but the one I'm using came with my Vantec NexStar 3 External HDD so if anyone else has one and know if this cable/device could be at fault please let me know.

 

I'm also waiting for the final 207 BIOS to get posted which I'm hoping will fix the issue (if it is in fact a BIOS-related issue we are dealing with here). I know some users have tried out the 207 Beta BIOS but I haven't seen any mention of it for this type of problem (which is the only one I've currently experienced with my new laptop). If someone using the 207 Beta BIOS and has an external HDD they could test via eSATA and wouldn't mind posting their experiences would be great.

 

Can I kindly ask you why did you upgrade BIOS while everything was fine with stock BIOS 203?

 

To Oldman:

Not at all...that's a very fair question. Well...I would like to say that it was because I was experiencing the "flaky" eSATA connection prior to updating the BIOS and I thought that updating the BIOS might fix the issue. But the truth would be that even if I wasn't experiencing the flaky eSATA connection issue I still would have updated the BIOS simply because that's just the way I am. I always keep my system as up-to-date as possible, including updating the BIOS and sometimes updating the firmware on optical drives. I figure if something has changed that the manufacturer has released an update for it...it can only be for the better.

It's always a risk of course but I know that before I go ahead and do something like this. For some people, not updating would be the sensible, logical choice, whether there was a perceived problem or not. For me that's not really much of a choice because I would rather try something, screw up and have to troubleshoot/solve the problem then not to try anything in the first place.

I hope that's a fair answer to your question. In all honestly it's just because that is just the way I am. Cheers & thanks for the post.

 

Are you using RAID-0/RAID-1 or just enhance mode?
The reason I ask is because I was told by Asus the eSATA will not work if HD is set to RAID mode.

 

I'm on RAID 0 and eSATA works for me. I just can't boot with it in.

 

I'm using RAID 0 and I tried to plug in the hard drive then powering up the hard drive.
What followed could only be described as interesting, it seems my computer just got slower and slower then froze, I turned off the hard drive and back to normal. Maybe I'll wait for new firmware that might fix this.

 

Yes it won't boot with eSATA, they said it's normal "RAID is not compatible with AHCI mode '".

 

Thanks for relaying that quote, but I don't think that's entirely accurate, because I'm using the matrix storage drivers with ahci enabled (otherwise I'd have no NCQ). But there are resolved issues in the intel release notes for 8.5.0.1032 on vista (I'm on xp pro), is that maybe what they mean? I've described my issue before and it's a problem in the ICH ROM recognizing my disks at POST with eSATA in, not a problem booting windows.

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/16750/eng/releasenotes.htm (see 'Resolved Issues' for AHCI/Vista)

 

I agree with you, if disk was detected at POST it should be able to boot from eSATA, however, I think Asus might be right, the update driver is for Windows, but at post screen it was before the driver even loaded.

 

To be clear on this, I'm not trying to boot from esata, the problems appear when I try to boot off my RAID 0 stripe when I have my esata disk plugged in. I have to plug it in after windows boots and remove it upon shutdown. If I keep the esata disk plugged in at POST it will fail to see one of my RAID disks. I then have to cold boot a number of times for my second RAID disk to be recognized and the stripe to be seen as healthy.

 

Do you have a knowledge how eSATA port connects to MoBo:?
SATA
IDE
PCI
PCI-e

 

Sorry, I thought you were trying to boot from eSATA port .
I'll ask Asus to see if they can do anything about it.

 

Hey. I've been having issues with my eSATA external HDD drive as well and while doing some searching, I discovered this little bit that might help those of us with similar problems:

"*Note for eSATA: Be sure the portion of the cable going into the drive is long enough to make good contact with the drive. Some cables have a shorter metal piece that doesn’t make good contact, which will prevent drive detection or could cause the drive to go offline if the cable is bumped."

I found that on the Seagate support site as I have a 500GB Seagate SATA-II HDD in a Vantec Nexstar 3 external enclosure. More info. can be found here:

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=226280b0bf3ea110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD

I never once considered that the problem may be due to the cables having short metal contacts. I'm not able to check my cable at this time, nor do I have a replacement cable for testing. Something to consider at least.

Another thing I may look into when I have the chance is the jumper settings on the drive. Not sure if I have it set for SATA or SATA-II.

*Update* I found some additional info. on another site that may again help with the eSATA issues. I will test this out tonight and update this tread in a day or so.

http://stevenharman.net/blog/archiv...ms-my-esata--sata-ii-enclosure-wont-play.aspx