G1S and eSATA External Hard Drive

Guys,

I do not know why this is so hard but I am having a really hard time trying to get Vista to recognize my External eSATA hard drive.

I can actually see the drive in the "Safely Remove Hardware" dialoge/icon but it will not show up in My Computer.

I have rebooted, tried using just USB, checking the BIOS, trying to "Add New Hardware", nothing.

Any tips?

 

Dude i havent used Vista yet.
I think this is what you need to do though.
1) Right click on your My Computer icon
2) Hit manage
3) Look on left Frame. It should say Disk management.
4) If you see Unallocated disk space. That is more than likely your Esata.
5) Select it. Format and Activate/Allocate

Restart! it should show up though even without restart in my computer.

 

Well, well, well. You nailed it.

I did not even think of that.

Rep given.

 

Cool man glad it worked thanks for the rep.
That means Vistas hardware access interface is pretty much same as XP. I took my chances of telling you to access the disk management console through my computer, wasn't sure if it was same as XP

 

OK so now there are more problems. When the eSATA drive is attached to the computer when it is booting up it will not boot.

And now when the eSATA drive is connected to the computer when it is already booted up, the computer's display driver fails and Vista has to restart the driver. Plus, the drive still does not show up.

Does anyone know what is going wrong?

 

Have you installed the latest eSATA patch from ASUS downloads?

 

My guess is it's trying to boot from the external first. Check your boot device order in the BIOS, your internal HDD should come first.

 

Yeah, that was one of the other things that I checked.

It gets to the Microsoft loading screen, but it just keeps going, like it is addicted and just can't stop itself .

As for the Asus driver, I cannot remember if I did that but I will try it.

EDIT: Go figure, the Asus support site is down. GAAA!

 

Ok so I tried the driver update and it still is hanging (I am on another computer typing this).

The key here is that is just keeps loading at the Microsoft screen, the green bar just keeps going. So I know that the computer already selected my primary IDE for boot and Vista is trying to load.

Help?!

EDIT: Also, after about 5 min, the screen goes blank and it will not respond.

 

What's on your eSATA drive? did you install Windows on it?

I am using eSATA on G1S right now too, but everytime if I want to boot from it I hit ESC key and select the third option which is the IDE drive to boot.

 

Are there drivers for the enclosure on an included disk or on the manufacturer's website? eSATA support still isn't perfect with most OSs' built-in drivers. That could cause the boot problem...

~ Brett

 

No, only music.

I found a fix, I think.

When I unplugged the eSATA drive and rebooted I noticed that the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon was in my tray (BTW, I always used that to unplug the eSATA drive when it worked in the first place) and it said that the drive was still connected (it was not, I double checked ). I told it to stop and it safely removed the hardware. I plugged in the eSATA drive, and it worked. I am going to try to reboot now and see what happens.

 

Problem solved with the solution above.

Looks like Windows did not Remove the Hardware like it was supposed to because the second time obviously worked.

I also swapped ends of the eSATA cable just to make sure.

Picky technology *humph*

 

If any program/explorer windows/whatever is accessing the drive, it might not remove properly. Usually you get a message, but it's possible you missed it.