Legit Reviews

i know the D975XBX2 doesn't have eSATA availble but i have a eSATA card that worked fine with XP but now that i have installed win & 64 it isn't recognized unless i have it on and do a restart. i thought that i had to make a BIOS setting to get that to work initially but can't remember if that is the case or not. anyone have any ideas how to get this working?
Thanks

On my board, to make the eSATA hot swapable the SB600 chip needs to be in ide/ahci mode. Otherwise, for the os to recognize an attached device, the device needs to be on before booting. The chip controlling the port is a Marvell flavor.

i changed the Configure SATA setting in the BIOS from IDE to AHCI and after a couple of reboots the eSATA is working. but it is slow to recognize the eSATA drive and very slow to close it, but it works. i read that i was supposed to do a registry change in win 7 swithing it there to ANCI before i do it in the BIOS. i may revert the BIOS back to IDE reboot, do the registry thing and then switch it in the BIOS. We'll see. if this works ok I'm not going to mess with it.

Try this....
http://forums.legitreviews.com/about385 ... 24#p202824

Once you get it working make sure you install the correct AHCI/RAID drivers. For that I'd need to know what motherboard you have.

Intel D975XBX2

After you get the machine running with AHCI enabled in the BIOS download the latest Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers.
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/confirm ... uctID=2101

If you can't get it working Monoprice has a cheap PCIe 1X eSATA card I use in another machine. It works fine and doesn't care what your BIOS is set to, as far as I know.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/produ ... 1&format=2
Drivers for the Monoprice card if you go that route.
http://www.siliconimage.com/docs/3132_x ... 6_logo.zip

what does Intell rapid storage tech drivers do?
now that i have pretty much rebuilt this machine, should i flash the BOIS? and if so just to be sure i do it correctly, how does one flash the BIOS? in the meantime i will be looking for the latest BIOS for this MB. actually i have to find out what BIOS update i am running. would i find that in the BIOS somewhere?
Thanks

well i did all of that and it seems the same as before. if i have a drive in the Hard drive dock and turn the dock on the computer will recognize the drive and when i turn the dock it will dissapear from the computer, it just takes about 30 or 40 seconds to disappear. But at least the eSATA works.
Thanks

RST installs the driver for the RAID/AHCI controller and gives you a small app to monitor the drives. I thought I linked directly to the RST drivers you needed? If not let me know and I'll steer you in the right direction.

As far as your BIOS goes, I'd update it. Like I said before there there a ton of fixes in the previous revisions.
http://www.intel.com/support/motherboar ... 022312.htm
Read that, it should tell you how to flash your board.

If you want to see which BIOS you're running download HWiNFO64.
http://www.hwinfo.com/files/hw64_392.exe

Start the program and you'll see a little window pop up. In there it should tell you the BIOS version. See pic.