Can't Safely Remove Esata Drive?

[Norm74656]

I'm using an Asus P6X58D motherboard (Intel I7-960, 6GB Ram) running Windows 7 Ultimate, I have the Intel sata controller set for AHCI in the bios and I have the latest available Intel drivers installed. My case has a esata cable and front mounted port and the cable does run to a port on the Intel controller, not the Marvell 91xx 6G sata controller.

I'm using a Vantec hard drive dock that supports both USB and Esata. When I'm using the Esata option I can plug it in and the system does recognize the drive and I have no problem using it but it does not appear on the list of drives that can be stopped on the "Safely remove hardware" menu. So in order to remove any drive that's plugged into the dock I have to shut the system down in order to remove the drive.

Does anyone have an idea what the problem is and how I can get this to work properly?

Thanks,

- Norm

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Can't Safely Remove Esata Drive?

You can remove the device using device manager, disable it then uninstall when you need to hot swap.

Intel's controller wont offer the safely remove option, not sure why, you can try one of these programs
HotSwap!

EIDE Hot Swap Software

[Norm74656]

Re: Can't Safely Remove Esata Drive?

I'm going to have to try that and see, however from what I've been able to gather by doing a lot of Googling:

ICH9 does not support hotplug. ICH9R does.

Likewise ICH10 = no hotplug, ICH10R = hotplug all day.

My EP35-DS4 with ICH9R hotplugs just fine. I was moving HDDs around without powering off the other afternoon.

From the P6X58D Premium manual: Intel ICH10R Southbridge

So this particular Sata controller and drivers are supposed to have this ability, most people can't get it to work but a few seem to have no problem. If worst comes to worst I can try switching the cable from the Intel ICH10R to the Marvel 88SE9123 6.0GB controller and see if I have any better luck with safely remove on that controller.

Thanks,

- Norm

[ASUS - Mason Winner]

Re: Can't Safely Remove Esata Drive?

The P6X58D Premium does not have an ESATA bus, so that is why there is no "Safely remove hardware" option. The ICH10R controller is meant for local drives that are always connected which is why you don't have the option to "Safely remove hardware". However, you can still use the ICH10R controller to connect your ESATA drive and still be able to hotswap drives safely without any issues. Have you installed the Intel Matrix Storage software? If you have Matrix Storage installed, you should get a pop-up message telling you when a drive is connected or disconnected from the Intel controller.

[ahlok]

Re: Can't Safely Remove Esata Drive?

did you enable the ahci in bios ?
i enable it and able to remove the hdd.