rated:
posted: Aug. 9, 2008 @ 11:10a
SimMike said:mjschmit said:To get faster speeds, bypass the usb interface, and connect the sata drive to your computer directly using an esata cable and a esata adapter that plugs into a sata port on the motherboard. You will also need a sata power line adapter that you can extend to any length with extra wire. I got an ESATA enclosure and it doesn't work correctly with my Intel chipset SATA onboard controller. It will work OK if I power the drive on before booting, but if I power it up after Vista starts, it won't properly recognize the drive. This same exact drive doesn't do this with an older Opteron/Nvidia mainboard combo, where esata works perfectly fine. So my point is, don't assume esata connected to your onboard sata ports is going to be hot-swappable like USB 2.0. Maybe this has to do with my particular enclosure - I don't think so - or my particular onboard controller. The motherbord is a Gigabyte Intel 965 chipset, with ICH8 controller. So my point is, don't assume esata is going to work with your setup. Whereas, you can rest assured that USB 2.0 will. I might look into getting a PCI esata controller, because I really do want the speed of esata and I want to be able to turn the drive on and off at will.
It sounds like your mobo doesn't support sata2 or you aren't running in sata2 mode. Sata1 mode does not support hot swap capabilities. Check bios settings...