eSATA External HDD and m860tu

Just bought myself the following external hdd and esata cable for my m860tu;

HDD

Cable

When i plug the hard disk into the computer using the USB cable provided it works absolutely fine, no problems at all. However when i use the eSATA cable it slows down my computer to the point where it is unusable, its still running but runs incredibly slowly, mouse jumping all over the place when i move it around. Sometimes it will speed up again for a couple of seconds and then it slows down again.

Anyone got any suggestions of how to solve this, as i mainly wanted the HDD because it had eSATA. Someone suggested the hdd issuing lots of interrupts but i have no idea how to do anything about this.

The only thing i noticed was after trimming back the plastic on the ends of the eSATA cable to make sure it could fit into the slots all of the way it would go into the port on my laptop far more than the port on my HDD, but i don't know if this is just the way the USB / eSATA port has been done.

Many Thanks.

De@thknight

 

did you install latest intel matrix storage driver. latest version is 8.8. I do myself expirenced many many problems with my esata port @ a m570tu which were all gone after installing the new driver. so give it a try.

if you wanna use turbo memory you need to install latest driver 1.9 or else an older version of intel matrix storage driver is included which didnt fix any problems for me.

link intel storage driver: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...OSs=150&OSFullName=Windows Vista* 64&lang=eng

link intel turbo memory driver (includes storage driver): http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...OSs=150&OSFullName=Windows Vista* 64&lang=eng

greetings flode

 

Thanks, it kinda worked, now it doesn't hang my system when i plug it in, but i still cannot see it in my computer and when i tried restarting with it plugged in windows wouldn't start, it just stayed on the windows loading bar doing nothing.

Any ideas?

Thanks
DK

EDIT: When i plug it in the intel storage matrix gives me a popup on the task bar saying that a storage device has been detected and something about port 0 and multipliers, can't remember it exactly as it told it to ignore the it (doh!) and i don't want to restart as im working. But it doesn't show up in my computer or the intel storage matrix window.

 

well esata drives normaly take a bit longer to recognize then usb drives. but after 1 minute it should show up. the popup frpm the storage driver that an device is conected is normal.

another question: is this complete new harddisc? if yes maybe you need to format it first or else it does not show you any partitions.

greetings flode

 

ok i'll plug it in a leave it and see if anything happens

and yes it is band new as of yesterday, but i did a format on it with it plugged in using USB in order to rename it.

Thanks,
DK

EDIT: This is the message;

A storage devce was connected. If this device is a port multiplier, only port 0 of the port multiplier will be active.

 

as i said the message is normal i do get this message too. i wish you good luck with esata drive hopefully it will be recognized. i dont know any other solution for this problem i told you all my expirence maybe some1 else can help more.

greetings flode

 

Cheers for the help, i've had the drive plugged in for about 10 mins now and its still not showing up. Thanks for the help, has anyone else got any other suggestions?

Thanks
DK

 

Hi De@thknight

I would suggest you try a few different cables as there have been a few issues with the cables not going in far enough on the HD side of the connection. This error occured alot with WD drives due to how the connector was built on the side of the HDD.

 

Thread jack!

I have a funny problem with my external drive and eSATA. It works fine generally but can only be detected if I boot Windows with the drive already connected. If I disconnect the drive while I'm in Windows and plug it back in it never appears so I basically have to reboot in order to use the drive.

I thought eSATA was hot swappable so you could just plug and remove whenever you please but is that only available on Vista since I'm running XP? Every time I try to install the Intel Matrix Storage Driver it says something about my computer not having the right specifications or something like that.

 

May be it doesn't get a drive letter when you plug it in?

 

esata hot swap is vista only, sorry

It may be available in xp if you're using ahci mode, I'm not sure though.

 

Yeah but it doesn't appear in disk manager either.

Ah that explains it.


I've read the guides to enabling AHCI on XP but none of them make sense or work?

 

The method documented in various places online should work, you just need to know that the "ahci mode" in the bios of the M860TU is simply called OS installed XP or Vista. XP=ide mode, Vista=ahci mode

Also you'll either need to find a guide for your exact chipset, or replace and reference to the chipset hardware id in the inf/reg script (depending on the guide) with your chipsed hw id.

 

Hm. Can any one confirm if enabling AHCI definitely enables hot swapping on XP?

 

Reading around, it looks like it does

 

Schwing!

It does work once AHCI is enabled. And it was blindingly easy as well.

Awesome.

 

Glad we were able to help.