Scott Mueller's Upgrading and Repairing

I have a question. This is about Sata. I have an external
enclosure with an E-Sata connection. I have a E-sata bracket that I connect
to it. If I connect it and turn it on, plug it in and turn on the pc, my pc
always detects it as Drive 0 and my C(system drive) as Drive 1. If I turn it
off and disconect it while the system is on, and then wait till the system
boots up and then connect it, it detects it as the last drive(in the proper
order). Its not that this is a problem, it is just strange to me and I
didn't think it worked this way. I since tried moving the connection to a
different Sata port(there are two ports on the bracket, one of each goes to
the next available sata port on the mainboard in order). Also on this
external drive I just have acronis images and nothing else on the drive. The
only difference when I switch to a different connector is its either primary
or secondary Sata.

That makes sense, but also in disk management it also marks this external
drive as Active. Is this the way it is supposed to work?. I just didn't think
it should report it as the first drive(0). If I connected it as firewire I
bet it would not detect it as drive 0!.....Please explain this to me!. Thanks!

What you are experiencing is normal normal behavior for standard SATA ports
when used in a statically connected vs. hot plugged arrangement. For the port
to recognize that you have an external drive plugged in (i.e. eSATA), the
port must support eSATA operation (and be properly configured), which gives
it the ability to detect the difference between a drive internally connected
vs. one connected externally via an eSATA cable.

Most Intel 965 and 975 chipset based motherboards support eSATA if properly
configured. For most 965 boards you can use any of the ports in eSATA mode
(once properly configured), however for 975 boards only one port may be
usable for eSATA.

For example, look at the following photo of an Intel D975XBX2 motherboard:
http://developer.intel.com/products/mot ... 75xbx2.jpg

You can see eight SATA connectors on the board in the upper LH part of the
photo (4 black, 3 blue, and 1 red). According to the documentation for this
motherboard, only the red SATA connector can be used with a back panel
adapter for an external SATA (eSATA) drive.

For motherboards with 965 chipsets, it may depend on the version of the ICH8
(I/O Controller Hub, or south bridge) chip found on the board:
http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/da ... 313056.htm

According to the ICH8 datasheet, only ICH8 versions supporting 6 SATA ports
(ICH8R, ICH8DH, ICHDO) also support eSATA operation. It also states that hot
plugging of a boot drive is *not* allowed (understandable!), that the SATA
Feature Support in the BIOS Setup must be set to AHCI/RAID Enabled mode, and
that the Intel Matrix Storage Manager (driver) must be installed as well:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product ... uctID=2101

Check your motherboard manual to see if you have either the 975 chipset with
4 or more SATA ports, or the 965 with 6 SATA ports (ICH8R/DH/DO). If so, then
insure that the SATA Feature Support in the BIOS Setup is set to AHCI/RAID
Enabled, and that you are loading the Intel Matrix Storage Driver. On 975
chipset motherboards, also insure that you are using the correct port
connector. For other chipsets and/or motherboards, consult the relevant
documentation for further details.

If your chipset/motherboard does not support eSATA operation, you will most
likely have to live with the behavior you have experienced so far. You might
be able to mitigate or work around this behavior somewhat by connecting only
the highest numbered (lowest priority) SATA port to the external connector.

Finally, note that Disk Management shows (and can set) partitions (not
drives) as Active, which means bootable. In most cases the first primary
partition on a drive will be marked Active, even if it does not have a
bootable OS installed. If the drive is not going to be used to boot the
system, then whether any partition on the drive is marked active or not will
have no effect.

The main rules about Active partitions is that there can be up to 4 primary
partitions on a single drive, and only one primary partition on a drive can
be marked Active at a given point in time.

One strange behavior with Disk Management is that once you mark any one of
the primary partitions on a drive as Active, after that point you can only
change which primary partition is Active, but you cannot reset the drive such
that *none* of the partitions are Active. Therefore, if you have only a
single primary partition marked Active, Disk Management will not be able to
unmark it. This is not really a problem though, as the Active status of the
primary partitions on a drive is only checked by the BIOS if you do in fact
try to boot from it. Scott.

I don't think my chipset supports this option. It is an Nvdidia nForce 4
SLI X16 Chipset. I looked through the manual to try and find settings
related to this and could not. There is no mention of eSata in the
documentation at all. I described my situation to MSI TECHNICAL SUPPORT
and they told me, "Thats a Microsoft problem, you'll have to contact
them". That is kind of hard to believe isn't it?. I guess my next
mainboard I puchase will have an Intel Chipset. I'll be sure to ask you
for a recomendation next time I build a system. Thanks! Heres a link to
my motherboard,

http://tinyurl.com/dukjp

Just letting you know within my Thread that I signed up a while ago, just haven't posted anything. Those are my email messages. Anyway, I am all signed up and visit the forum every few days.