eSATA not being recognised

Gromm

Gromm

Gromm

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Joined
5 Nov 2007
Posts
99
Hey, so I have an IcyBox with a Samsung 500gb hdd in it, and an Asus P5KC motherboard with an eSATA port on the back. When I connect the icybox up to the eSATA port with a SATA to eSATA cable, I can't get it to recognise that there's a drive attached, even after a reboot. USB works fine, but I don't know if there's some kind of procedure to get the motherboard to recognise eSATA drives?

Any help would be great, cheers
 
Which IcyBox? I have Icy Box IB-360AStUS & first thing need to do is change the (enclosures) internal SATA connector to the top one*. Can't have both eSATA & USB just one at a time :mad:

Then, in mobo (Asus A8N32-SLi) BIOS have to change the eSATA controller mode from RAID to SATA2.

eSATA performance is impressive. See my results here. Unfortunately mobo died & back to USB :(

EDIT:*Highlighted one...
 
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How are you powering the drive?

eSATA has power, SATA doesn't. So if you are using SATA to eSATA, make sure you are using a source of external power.
 
I had the same problem with a WD mybook.

If you look at the plugs on the cable are they different ?

The esata plug should be different as the esata socket is deeper than sata.

The esata plug I had was not going into the socket far enough to make a connection. I trimmed back the plastic on the shoulder of the plug by about 2mm and everything now works fine.
 
WD My Book, famous issue as above, Data port is too far sunk into case, most ESATA Cables wont connect, trim casing of cable with knife.

Has nothing to do with ESATA plugs or such, just WD made a boob.

I hit 68MB/Sec sustained on the WD My Book 500ES Prem.
 
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Not just Mybook though, there a quite a few motherboards/ext HDD/media centres that suffer the same issues with esata plugs.
 
I bought two esata cables from different places when I got my Mybook, didn't notice they were different to begin with until I tried to use the second one and it wouldn't work. That's when I noticed they were different, one had a longer "tongue" than the other, that's when I started searching and found a few sites with guides to get the cables working.
 
Are any of you guys connecting their external drives via esata using a PCMCIA adapter for a laptop?

Just wondering how the speeds compare to USB.
 
Hmm that AKASA lead I am buying next week for my WD MY BOOK PREMIUM 500GB ext HDD.

mobo is ASUS P5K Premium

So I should expect problems?
 
Yip, it wont connect at WD end, you need do this.


sata2aeg7.jpg



You need cut plastic (round all 4 sides) bellow this RED LINE, I would do it in 1mm stages till you get good Electrical Contact and its tight (so cut away enough not just enough to get Electrical Contact and it is slack and later your loosing contact as Cable or HDD is moved.

At a total guess, I removed about 3mm of plastic.
 
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