Vista Tutorial - Help with Vista X64 and eSATA

Hi,
I am having issues with my eSATA being recognized in Vista X64 (SP1).

• Vista Ultimate X64 SP1 - Just installed it yesterday and I updated everything as needed (bios, drivers, Windows updates, etc).
• Abit KN8 Ultra (AMD nForce4 Ultra) - Product specs at Abit USA doesn't say anything about AHCI, but Abit.tw is more detailed: Supports 4 ports SATA 3Gb/s data transfer rate | Supports SATA AHCI, providing native command queuing and native hot plug | NV SATA RAID 0/1/0+1
• eSATA enclosure is an Antec MX-1 (I am using the eSATA bracket) w/ the Western Digital 1TB desktop GP (WD10EACS)

To be specific Vista cannot recognize the external drive when I power on the external drive. I found out I can get Vista to recognize it by running "scan for hardware changes" under Device Manager -> Disk drives.

1. How do I get Vista to auto recognize the external drive without having to select scan for hardware changes each time or powering up the computer with the external drive already powered on?

Another question I have is related to the safe removal of external devices. Under Windows XP Pro I could go to the bottom right in the toolbar and safely remove the external drive; however, Vista does not show that option even after the drive is recognized. The safely remove device works fine with my USB stick.

1. How do I get the external drive to be recognized as a "hot swapable" device or some device that can be "safely removed" from the computer?

Some notes:

• I cannot find anything in my bios that says AHCI.
• I am not aware of any SATA drivers that I can install, but I do have the latest bios from Abit and I also have the latest AMD nForce4 drivers from Nvidia.
• I tweaked Vista Ultimate X64 using the tutorial here at these forums, but I have not changed anything that would hinder devices/drive settings.
• Edit: Here is a link that shows the bios settings for my motherboard, KN8 Bios settings explained - Universal abit USA Forums
• Edit: I have raid disabled.

If there are other things that I should include please do let me know and I will try my best to include it. So far I find Vista to be great except this external drive annoyance.