I also have problems with this WD 500gig external HD using the eSata port in Windows7 x64 Ulitimate. I have a pci-e silicon esata card in a Dell GX620 Pentium D 3.6. I have another enclosure using a XTRASTOR brand which seems to work OK in Windows7. It has to be the WD external HD. It has to boot for it to work, otherwise it freezes. I have WinXP pro and Win7 on a dual boot. I did have some problems with one eSata cable that seems to be a little fidgety but only in Win7. I like this dual booting XP and Win7 x64. It gives you time to work out problems. So far I continue to hate the design of Vista/Win7 and oddities like this does'nt make me like it more. I doubt I'll use Win7 for along time on a regular basis. I have yet to see any good reason. I like WinXP.
Windows 7 External esata HDD not recognized
- Thread starter outy565
- Start date
Has anybody figured out how to run eSATA with Windows 7 Pro x64?
I've got a Gigabyte EP45-UD3LR.
As with most of the posters, I have no problem using external USB to my WD Black HD.
But not a prayer of using it with eSATA.
The drive remains invisible.
I've checked wires, drives etc. No physical problem.
The motherboard has an Intel ICH10 2 port SATA Storage Controller 2-3A26 and a JMicron 368 chip which is apparently for IDE drives.
I'm still a novice and really need help with this.
Thanks.
Hugger
I've got a Gigabyte EP45-UD3LR.
As with most of the posters, I have no problem using external USB to my WD Black HD.
But not a prayer of using it with eSATA.
The drive remains invisible.
I've checked wires, drives etc. No physical problem.
The motherboard has an Intel ICH10 2 port SATA Storage Controller 2-3A26 and a JMicron 368 chip which is apparently for IDE drives.
I'm still a novice and really need help with this.
Thanks.
Hugger
Athlonite
New Member
You need to manually install the driver DO NOT use the setup.exe wait till win7 installs it as an Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller then use update driver and browse to the folder you unzipped the JMB driver to
Athlonite
New Member
South Bridge:
6x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2_0, SATA2_1, SATA2_2, SATA2_3, SATA2_4, SATA2_5) supporting up to 6 SATA 3Gb/s devices
Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10
GIGABYTE SATA2 (JMicron 368) chip:
1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices
iTE IT8718 chip:
that would be an JMB SATAII controller one of the post in here has a link to an driver for it
Last edited:
After reading through this thread here's what I had to do to get it to work on my ASUS m4a89gtd-pro motherboard.
-I had to have the ATA controller enabled in the bios. (I had disabled it since I did not have any ATA devices, everything was SATA)
-Installed the driver from jmicron for my 36x chipset.
-Plug in drive Power, Then SATA cable, THEN turn it on.
-Right away after turning it on I'd go into Disk Manager, but no disk found. Right click on the left menu and select "Rescan Disks" and then device would show up in the list.
-For some reason once I made the disk active and tried to format it would hang/freeze. But for some crazy reason (don't ask me why) if I made the disk active, closed disk management, open my computer double click on the new drive. It would prompt me to format and bam! Formated fine, no problems works perfect now.
Why I had to go thorugh all that crap I have no idea, I'm just gonna chalk it up to bad drivers and Windows 7.
This was on Win7 Ult x64. Was initially using USB 2.0 which worked like it always should and does. But I just had to have the speed of eSATA. Hope that helps someone out there, took me a good two hours to coax it into working.
GL!
-I had to have the ATA controller enabled in the bios. (I had disabled it since I did not have any ATA devices, everything was SATA)
-Installed the driver from jmicron for my 36x chipset.
-Plug in drive Power, Then SATA cable, THEN turn it on.
-Right away after turning it on I'd go into Disk Manager, but no disk found. Right click on the left menu and select "Rescan Disks" and then device would show up in the list.
-For some reason once I made the disk active and tried to format it would hang/freeze. But for some crazy reason (don't ask me why) if I made the disk active, closed disk management, open my computer double click on the new drive. It would prompt me to format and bam! Formated fine, no problems works perfect now.
Why I had to go thorugh all that crap I have no idea, I'm just gonna chalk it up to bad drivers and Windows 7.
This was on Win7 Ult x64. Was initially using USB 2.0 which worked like it always should and does. But I just had to have the speed of eSATA. Hope that helps someone out there, took me a good two hours to coax it into working.
GL!
Athlonite
New Member
For me on my Asus M3A32MVP-Deluxe mobo I have two controller settings in BIOS one is for the Marvel 806121 SATA Raid and the other is for the 806111 eSATA but despite numerous attempts at getting it to work it just fails to even install the controller i fixed the problem by buying an cheap 2 port PCIe x1 SATA controller card
I would very much appreciate advice from anyone who can help. I have a similar problem.
I have two SATA drives on the two motherboard connectors, and they work fine. I like the speed!
I just bought a Verbatim 1Tb eSATA external drive, and a Pluscom 4 Port SATA PCI adapter - chipset VT6421A to
provide an external eSATA port to connect it to.
I loaded the driver from the CD that came with the Pluscom card - it shows as viamraid.sys 6.0.7600.6230 (C) 1992-2007.
When I boot the PC with the eSATA drive connected and powered up, I see the "boot" screen for the Pluscom (briefly) in the start sequence. The PC gets to the "whirling windows" screen just after that, and freezes when they finish their whirling. I left it overnight, and nothing changed.
If I boot with the eSATA drive disconnected, the PC starts OK - but the "boot" screen for the Pluscom card doesn't appear. If I then connect the eSATA drive, I get a variety of glitches then the machine crashes. Unplugging it at that point doesn't help. The Event Viewer shows a rash of error messages which I can post if necessary. I contacted Verbatim, but apart from an acknowledgement have had no reply.
The drive works fine connected as USB - but that defeats the point of buying eSATA.
The interface card is PCI: this PC is old enough not to have PCI-E slots but works well otherwise.
Moderators - if this is in the wrong place, feel free to move it.
I have two SATA drives on the two motherboard connectors, and they work fine. I like the speed!
I just bought a Verbatim 1Tb eSATA external drive, and a Pluscom 4 Port SATA PCI adapter - chipset VT6421A to
provide an external eSATA port to connect it to.
I loaded the driver from the CD that came with the Pluscom card - it shows as viamraid.sys 6.0.7600.6230 (C) 1992-2007.
When I boot the PC with the eSATA drive connected and powered up, I see the "boot" screen for the Pluscom (briefly) in the start sequence. The PC gets to the "whirling windows" screen just after that, and freezes when they finish their whirling. I left it overnight, and nothing changed.
If I boot with the eSATA drive disconnected, the PC starts OK - but the "boot" screen for the Pluscom card doesn't appear. If I then connect the eSATA drive, I get a variety of glitches then the machine crashes. Unplugging it at that point doesn't help. The Event Viewer shows a rash of error messages which I can post if necessary. I contacted Verbatim, but apart from an acknowledgement have had no reply.
The drive works fine connected as USB - but that defeats the point of buying eSATA.
The interface card is PCI: this PC is old enough not to have PCI-E slots but works well otherwise.
Moderators - if this is in the wrong place, feel free to move it.
UPDATE: Verbatim don't have a clue. Their answer was to "switch on the machine with it plugged in" despite the fact I've done that many times, always with the same result, and told them. Their next suggestion was to update the BIOS on the motherboard. Since the drive is connecting to a PCI card, that doesn't seem too clever.
I conclude that Windows 7 is not compatible with eSATA drives at all. I've read lots of reviews of different PCI eSATA cards: all go from Win 98 to Vista - and then stop. There are some comments from Win 7 users to say "doesn't work with Win 7".
I'll be very pleased if anyone can report an external eSATA drive working with Win 7, and a PCI (not PCI-e) card that supports it.
I conclude that Windows 7 is not compatible with eSATA drives at all. I've read lots of reviews of different PCI eSATA cards: all go from Win 98 to Vista - and then stop. There are some comments from Win 7 users to say "doesn't work with Win 7".
I'll be very pleased if anyone can report an external eSATA drive working with Win 7, and a PCI (not PCI-e) card that supports it.
A further update:
I connected one of the internal SATA drives to the PCI card instead of direct to the motherboard, and that drive worked just fine. It appeared in the boot splash screen of the card, too. I think that proved that the card is OK.
I then connected the eSATA external drive to the PCI card while keeping the SATA drive connected. That also appeared in the boot splash screen, but then I got the same crashes as before with Win 7.
I conclude Win 7 is not compatible with eSATA - unless anyone knows different.
I connected one of the internal SATA drives to the PCI card instead of direct to the motherboard, and that drive worked just fine. It appeared in the boot splash screen of the card, too. I think that proved that the card is OK.
I then connected the eSATA external drive to the PCI card while keeping the SATA drive connected. That also appeared in the boot splash screen, but then I got the same crashes as before with Win 7.
I conclude Win 7 is not compatible with eSATA - unless anyone knows different.
I figured I'd check back on this after a almost a year but I still see no easy solution.
The only work around I know is to do the following. I have an acomdata esata HD.
1. shut down or put your computer to sleep
2. turn on your HD
3. turn your computer back on or wake it up
4. your esata HD will be recognized
On a related note, I have a laptop that does not detect its ethernet card. Since it cannot be powered on separately, the only solution I found for that one was the following:
1. right-click My Computer
2. select Properties
3. select Device Manager
4. expand Network Adapter
5. right-click your card and select Disable
6. confirm
7. go back to step 4 but select Enable instead of Disable
The only work around I know is to do the following. I have an acomdata esata HD.
1. shut down or put your computer to sleep
2. turn on your HD
3. turn your computer back on or wake it up
4. your esata HD will be recognized
On a related note, I have a laptop that does not detect its ethernet card. Since it cannot be powered on separately, the only solution I found for that one was the following:
1. right-click My Computer
2. select Properties
3. select Device Manager
4. expand Network Adapter
5. right-click your card and select Disable
6. confirm
7. go back to step 4 but select Enable instead of Disable
