EP45-UD3P and no removeable SATA drives.

[FlyingHorse]

I cannot get any SATA or eSATA drive to show up as removable under Vista x86/x64 or Win7 x86/x64 on my Intel ports.

I have tried with the BIOS set for AHCI and RAID modes. I've used the eSATA cable and ports provided with the motherboard as well as 3rd party versions. I've tried at least a dozen devices all on clean installs using drivers from the original CD to the latest available along with BIOS versions F9 & F10f and NONE of those drives shows up as a removable device nor do they ever show up under the "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" icon.

Has anyone gotten this to work? From the white papers, MSDN articles, and SATA 1.3 specs that I have read it all seems to point towards the BIOS not being written correctly. From what I have seen on Intel's own motherboards with this chipset there should be a way to select which ports are enabled for eSATA so that any drive connected will become removable but there is no such option for my motherboard.

If anyone can help I sure would appreciate it.

[pbcopter]

Re: EP45-UD3P and no removeable SATA drives.

I have the EP45-UD3P as well and I know that no drives show up as removable when set to RAID on the Intel ICH10R. (I have not used AHCI). I use a third party program called Hotswap that allows Safe removal and allows you to set which drives show up as removable. It works well with Windows 7 x64.

HotSwap!

[Acebmxer]

Re: EP45-UD3P and no removeable SATA drives.

I dont have any External drives but I know for the gigabyte controller they have special eSata drivers. Dont know about the intel controller but achi is supposed to had Hot swap so technically that is removable.

[Reggie]

Re: EP45-UD3P and no removeable SATA drives.

You need to install the Vista/Windows7 operating system in AHCI or RAID mode to have the AHCI driver installed.
You also need to have the Intel Matrix Storage Manager loaded.
You can use Hot Swap on the Intel ICH10R controller if your drives also support the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI).

If you are concerned about not getting the Safe Removal message, like Safe Removal does USB drives, that isn't part of the user interface. You could use a third party program like Hotswap to confirm all volumes assigned to the drive are not in use before removing, but it isn't necessary.

[FlyingHorse]

Re: EP45-UD3P and no removeable SATA drives.

I use a third party program called Hotswap that allows Safe removal and allows you to set which drives show up as removable. It works well with Windows 7 x64.

Thanks. I am aware of and have used HotSwap! myself; however this program doesn't resolve the problem of eSATA drives not being designated as removable. That is why these drives have the $RECYCLE.BIN as well as the "System Volume Information" folders installed. Also some programs like defraggers and anti-virus will treat removable devices differently. HotSwap! does not help in this regard.

[FlyingHorse]

Re: EP45-UD3P and no removeable SATA drives.

You need to install the Vista/Windows7 operating system in AHCI or RAID mode to have the AHCI driver installed.
You also need to have the Intel Matrix Storage Manager loaded.

Please refer to my first post.

You can use Hot Swap on the Intel ICH10R controller if your drives also support the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI).

Drives don't support AHCI. HBA's support AHCI. Drives support standards such as IDE, ATA, ATAPI, and SATA just to name a few.

If you are concerned about not getting the Safe Removal message, like Safe Removal does USB drives, that isn't part of the user interface. You could use a third party program like Hotswap to confirm all volumes assigned to the drive are not in use before removing, but it isn't necessary.

This last bit is quite untrue in regards to Microsoft Windows Operating Systems. Removable drives like modern SATA HDD's that are being used as hot-plug capable devices have to have their buffers bypassed or flushed to protect against file system corruption upon removal of the device. In order for an OS like Vista or Win7 to recognize a device as hot-plug capable the associated HBA must set the appropriate CAP.SXS bit to 1 (for AHCI 1.2 & 1.3 this would be bit 5 at offset 00h) as well as the appropriate PxCMD.ESP bit for each removable (eSATA) device port in order for that associated device to be recognized as being removable. In Windows only removable devices allow users to enable or disable the hardware and Windows device cache to either allow the device to be removed via the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon or at will.

The latest Microsoft White Paper in regards to eSATA can be found at:
Internal and External SATA Port Configuration

The AHCI specifications from Intel are located here:
AHCI Specification for Serial ATA

Also another informative document is the

HTH

[R_Hollandtekk]

Re: EP45-UD3P and no removeable SATA drives.

DVD sata drive is shows up as removable. Does that count on the purple gsata ports

[FlyingHorse]

Re: EP45-UD3P and no removeable SATA drives.

DVD sata drive is shows up as removable. Does that count on the purple gsata ports

No. The purple ports are for a different controller. The point of my thread concerns the Intel SATA ports.

[FlyingHorse]

Re: EP45-UD3P and no removeable SATA drives.

awwwwww.

Can't try yet. I have to use raid. But i learned that if you raid 0 half of the disks, the rest have to be raid 0 or raid 1, The other half can't be treated as jbod.

So I got half as raid 0 and the other half as raid 1. can boot from raid 0 or raid 1 without messing with either boot managers. F8-F12 during the boot menu, [not sure] to select which disk to boot.

Interesting though cuz the motherboard came with esata bracket and power cable. :)

Okay. Hope that works out for you.

[R_Hollandtekk]

Re: EP45-UD3P and no removeable SATA drives.

Okay. Hope that works out for you.

Have you tried ejecting the sata hard drive when the computer is powered off

[FlyingHorse]

Re: EP45-UD3P and no removeable SATA drives.

Bump...

[R_Hollandtekk]

Re: EP45-UD3P and no removeable SATA drives.

If anyone can help I sure would appreciate it.

Bump. planning on clean install 2 days, but before my win7 set up ill try to get working this. 1st try.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: EP45-UD3P and no removeable SATA drives.

Intel ICH10R does not support Hot Swapping via removable devices, you would need to use the hot swap program or another one similar. And I do think from previous tests these do not work properly either.

If you have to remove a device on the Intel controller you can disable then uninstall in device manager, then just connect it again when you are ready. I have done this many times myself in tests, and also just simply pulled drives and they were fine as well.

The eSATA Rack is meant for the J.Micron ports, and those will for sure allow you to hot swap via removable devices provided you have AHCI or RAID Set for those ports. You will want to choose the driver per your wishes though, here are the drivers >>

RX.XX.XX - Driver would get eSATA setting from BIOS/Option Rom.
RX.XX.XX_eSATA - Driver would report all Device connected as Removable Device with WriteCache Enabled.
RX.XX.XX_eSATA_WriteCacheDisabled - Driver would report all Device connected as Removable Device with WriteCache Disabled.
RX.XX.XX_No_eSATA

ftp://driver.jmicron.com.tw/jmb36x/XP_Vista_Win7/