I built a new machine a few weeks ago based around the Asus P5B Deluxe. It's a very nice machine which works just about perfectly. I plugged in my WD MyBook 500GB ES via USB to hold all my media. No problems.
However, one of the reasons for getting the ES was the fact that you can connect it up using eSATA and transfer files at 3GB/s (apparently). So, I bought an Akasa eSATA to eSATA cable and had a go. It didnt work at all initially, but I found out from the review section of the product listing that for some devices you need to cut away some of the plastic sleeving to get a proper connection.
So I did this on the HD end of the cable and it seemed to connect a bit better. Booted up and for the first time saw the drive recognised in the BIOS. All rather encouraging. Into XP and immediately onto the drive where I could see my files. I started up some music and BOOM. Gone. Machine hanging and generally not happy.
A reboot or two and some rooting about and the drive contents wouldnt appear. It seemed to be ok physically but the partition was 'lost'. Ok, no panic (honest!). Back onto USB and still no content so I had to resort to partition and file recovery software. I used Active@ File Recovery which seemed quite happy to rip all my files out the backdoor onto a spare drive (phew!) and after a format the HD was back to normal. I suppose I could have tried harder to rescue the partition itself rather than rip off the files, format the drive and copy the files back over.
So, my experience of connecting a WD MyBook to an Asus P5B via eSATA is bad to say the least. Probably all my fault like but you never know...
Lard
However, one of the reasons for getting the ES was the fact that you can connect it up using eSATA and transfer files at 3GB/s (apparently). So, I bought an Akasa eSATA to eSATA cable and had a go. It didnt work at all initially, but I found out from the review section of the product listing that for some devices you need to cut away some of the plastic sleeving to get a proper connection.
So I did this on the HD end of the cable and it seemed to connect a bit better. Booted up and for the first time saw the drive recognised in the BIOS. All rather encouraging. Into XP and immediately onto the drive where I could see my files. I started up some music and BOOM. Gone. Machine hanging and generally not happy.
A reboot or two and some rooting about and the drive contents wouldnt appear. It seemed to be ok physically but the partition was 'lost'. Ok, no panic (honest!). Back onto USB and still no content so I had to resort to partition and file recovery software. I used Active@ File Recovery which seemed quite happy to rip all my files out the backdoor onto a spare drive (phew!) and after a format the HD was back to normal. I suppose I could have tried harder to rescue the partition itself rather than rip off the files, format the drive and copy the files back over.
So, my experience of connecting a WD MyBook to an Asus P5B via eSATA is bad to say the least. Probably all my fault like but you never know...
Lard
