Does eSATA on M17x-R3 work?

I can't get it to recognize any esata devices (in the bios) or otherwise. They are powered enclosures and I hear the drives spin up. I have no USB devices connected to the adjacent USB ports. The only common connection is the eSATA cable so I will need to obtain an additional one to verify it's good.

Other than that, is there anything special required to get that shared eSATA port to work?

Cheers,

 

Sounds like there could be a problem with the port. Make sure you unplug it and pull the battery and hold power for 10 seconds or so, and you can also reset the CMOS by removing the bottom cover and unplugging the CMOS battery for about a minute. If that doesn't fix it, reinstall bios from support.dell.com annnnnd if the issue still occurs you need a new motherboard.

 

Ok , I guess it only works with some enclosures. It did not work with a 3 year old WD 3.5" 500GB eSATA + FW400 + USB2 enclosure, nor a three year old 500GB 2.5" wiebeTECH eSATA + FW800 enclosure, however the Intel RST driver fired right up and saw the NexStar3 eSATA + USB2 enclosure.

So it must be something in the enclosure that is not recognized by the bios on the M17x-R3.

Once it was recognized I booted Acronis Home 2011 with plus pak from a USB stick and cloned my SSD to the external 2.5" eSATA 500GB Seagate XT. Fasted cloning I've ever done. Rebooted and used F12 to select the eSATA port. Booted up, no activation, or WEI changes. It was as if I hadn't changed anything. Nowhere near as fast as the SSD but a good full backup!

I'll run this copy every week or so and always have a copy of my gaming drive just in case. Now that eSATA is working I guess I can also experiment with Linux or other OS or test Windows environments w/o impacting the working SSD master.

Just another way this Alienware is so much more full featured than the G73 it replaced.

Cheers,