eSATA is it Plug and Play?

[BillS22]

My motherboard has an eSATA port.
Can you turn an eSATA external drive on and off like a USB drive?

[skier]

i would assume, i'd have the HDD off, plug in eSATA, then turn on the drive though to be safe

(my case, card reader, and I/O shield all have eSATA, never used it though)

[kenc51]

ahci mode must be enabled in the bios. this way you get "hot plug" support
esata is just sata with a different connector; same underlying protocol / drivers

[BillS22]

oops. enabling AHCI crashed my machine. Win 7 repaired itself after I went back into bios and restored IDE.
I think you need to install windows with AHCI enabled.

I found a few web-posts with instructions to enable AHCI on the fly. complicated.....

I'm sticking with IDE for now. I turn my eSATA drive on before booting and the bios picks it up as another drive. I'm careful not to shut it down until my system is off.

[BillS22]

Found this link through Intel.com

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

I need to do some driver research......

[BillS22]

Help me think this through..
Here's Microsoft's instructiuons:

To resolve this issue, enable the AHCI driver in the registry before you change the SATA mode of the boot drive. To do this, follow these steps:
Exit all Windows-based programs.
Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
Locate and then click one of the following registry subkeys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\IastorV
In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.
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MORE INFORMATIONDuring the Windows 7 or Windows Vista installation process, any unused storage d...During the Windows 7 or Windows Vista installation process, any unused storage drivers are disabled. This behavior speeds up the operating system's startup process. When you change the boot drive to a driver that has been disabled, you must enable the new driver before you change the hardware configuration.

For example, assume that you install Windows Vista or Windows 7 on a computer that contains a controller that uses the Pciide.sys driver. Later, you change the SATA mode to AHCI. Therefore, the drive must now load the Msahci.sys driver. However, you must enable the Msahci.sys driver before you make this change.

This issue affects only the boot drive. If the drive that you change is not the boot drive, you do not experience this issue.

I looked into my registry and see both:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\IastorV

?????????????
I didn't check to see if one is enabled overthe other, but I assume Msahci needs to be active?
Install the Advanced Controller Drivers supplied by Intel? Then enable Msahci and then change my Bios?

[BillS22]

I figured it out.

All I had to do is go into regedit and change the start value on Msahci to 0.
Then boot to Bios and change the IDE mode to AHCI.

When I booted to Win 7 the drivers loaded and now my eSATA drive can be turned on or off while in Windows.

This is cool....

[Apoptosis]

yeah it is! Glad you got it figured out all!