M4400 eSATA issue

Hello all

I started with m4400 IRRT in Vista 32bit.

External drive seen in BIOS, Matrix Manager and Disk Management. Often the drive would appear to lock the system for periods of time. The drive could be seen when connected via USB without issue.

I tried to get the drive assigned a letter etc, but still didn't work.

I wiped the system, installed XP Pro SP3 in ATA. Then followed an excellently simple method to switch to ACHI by installing Intel Storage drivers (8.2) with a "Have Disk" method.

BIOS & Matrix Manager 8.2 see Drive in XP, but Disk Management does not. I seem to have slightly less than I started with.

The external enclosure chipset supports SATA 1, the drive itself supports I & II but is jumpered to I.

Anymore ideas?

Next I'm going to buy new enclosure, would love to know of a supported chipset. After that I'll be installing Win 7 64bit.

Thanks for any input.

 

If your going to go to the expense of buying a new enclosure, can I suggest you look at the newmodeus 2.5" optical bay hard drive caddy instead, I have a couple, and they're cheap and work perfectly with no cables, the only downside is your limited to the current largest capacity of 2.5" drives which is 640GB.
Just a thought

 

Thanks for the advice.

Actually this is all for a 3.5" disk.

 

Update

I decided to bypass the nasty JMicron 20330 chipset of the enclosure by opening it up, pulling out the internal eSATA cable and connected the external cable directly to the m4400 eSATA port.

Viola. The drive is seen by all concerned controllers and GUIs

Just need to find a decent 3.5" enclosure.

 

You could get one of these http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-BlacX-eSATA-Docking-Station/dp/B001A4HAFS
Got a similar one and it works great

 

Thanks for the info.

Since I'm travelling via motorcycle around the world editing video, I need something enclosed. I've decided to patch up my old enclosure with it's new hole. Problem solved.

 

Good idea....and nice job driving around