LaCie external HDD, why will it not work via eSATA?

DoubleCheese · 26 Oct 2009 at 16:00

I bought a LaCie d2 Quadra external HDD. It works via USB and Firewire but nothing happens when connected by eSATA. I've tried it on a two machines to see if one was faulty and they are the same. Under XP, Vista and now Win 7.

I returned it to the shop today and got an exchange thinking it was faulty, but before I left I tested the new one they gave me and it was exactly the same.

Is there anything special that needs doing? I'm following the instructions to the word and still can't get any joy.

Any ideas?

rpstewart · 26 Oct 2009 at 16:55

Have you ever had an eSATA drive working on your PC (I guess it's a laptop from the fact you tested in the shop)?

Is there anything in the BIOS which enables/disables the eSATA port?

Have you tried booting the PC with the drive attached and powered on to see if it's detected that way?

Destination · 26 Oct 2009 at 22:33

Enable e-sata in your BIOS.

Unless you've acpi, you'll need to boot the machine with the external drive connected for windows to find it, it will not allow for hotplugging, unlike usb etc.

Try a cold boot when you've preplugged the drive in, see if windows detects it that way.

DoubleCheese · 27 Oct 2009 at 19:57

hmm...I thought these were plug and play? I'll check the BIOS settings and see what happens.

AbsenceJam · 27 Oct 2009 at 20:02

They're not properly plug and play unless in AHCI mode. But they;'ll be detected at boot in IDE mode and you can pick them up in Windows by doing the scan for changes in device manager or by using hotswap.exe.