western digital 'my book' e-sata ?

JonnyV · 11 Mar 2009 at 22:15

Ive just got a western digital 'my book' external drive with an e-sata connection.

I had already bought the 'Akasa SATA to eSATA Adapter Kit' and 'Akasa eSATA to eSATA Data Cable'

The drive shows up in the bios but when windows loads (vista 64bit) there is just a black screen and system just stays on black screen, drive works fine with usb and firewire.

WD says ' We apologize for the inconvenience. eSata is a technology that is still evolving so not all system motherboard or controller cards may work. '

Is this correct ?

All im doing is pluging into the sata connection on the mother board and then plugging in an e-sata cable from the akasa adapter kit to the WD drive.

i got the drive just for the e-sata option, i could have bought a cheaper one had i of know it wouldnt work.

bremen1874 · 12 Mar 2009 at 03:44

It obviously should work as it's effectively no different to having another internal drive.

I’d check which SATA connectors you’re using for the internal drive(s) and the eSATA connection, and ensure that the boot order within the BIOS settings makes sense.

If you want to be able to hot-plug then you’ll need AHCI to be enabled. If you’ve installed Windows without AHCI enabled then I believe that you’ll need to jump through a few loops before/after enabling it.

JonnyV · 12 Mar 2009 at 17:26

bremen1874 said:
It obviously should work as it's effectively no different to having another internal drive.

I’d check which SATA connectors you’re using for the internal drive(s) and the eSATA connection, and ensure that the boot order within the BIOS settings makes sense.

If you want to be able to hot-plug then you’ll need AHCI to be enabled. If you’ve installed Windows without AHCI enabled then I believe that you’ll need to jump through a few loops before/after enabling it.

i have 3 sata connectors on the motherboard. 1 and 2 are HD and DVD and 3 is the 'Akasa SATA to eSATA Adapter Kit'

i only have the HD as a boot device in the bios.

will try again and see what happens.

thanks

rpstewart · 12 Mar 2009 at 17:38

Are you using the supplied eSATA cable? There have been a number of posts on here about problems with this sort of setup, most of which have been down to the plastic "tongues" on either side of the eSATA connector preventing a good connection to the port at the PC end. Normally a wee trim works wonders.

EDIT: Got it wrong, it's the mybook end that's the problem - the port is too far into the casing.

EDIT2 http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17810501

JonnyV · 12 Mar 2009 at 20:19

rpstewart said:
Are you using the supplied eSATA cable? There have been a number of posts on here about problems with this sort of setup, most of which have been down to the plastic "tongues" on either side of the eSATA connector preventing a good connection to the port at the PC end. Normally a wee trim works wonders.

EDIT: Got it wrong, it's the mybook end that's the problem - the port is too far into the casing.

EDIT2 http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17810501

Thanks for the advice, but ive just trimmed the e-sata cable down and it still doesnt work.

the cable seems to go in fine, but its a little loose. although the plug is pushed as far as it can go, and theres still room for more as the casing has been trimmed down.

ste-sim2x9 · 13 Mar 2009 at 17:57

I also have a western digital 'my book' external drive with an e-sata connection and i too have problems with mine. Mine will pick up in the bios and will be in my computer and i can use it but after a while it seems to fall asleep and then goes awol and i have to pull the power cable out and put it back in and go into system devices and refresh to get it to come back.