Vista - External Hard Drive with e SATA

I run Vista Home Premium on a self build computer with an Asus P5B Delux motherboard. It has an e SATA socket and I recently bought a Caddy for an External Drive to use as a back up with Windows Live OneCare. The drive is a 320G Seagate SATA2 ST3320620AS identical to the internal drive in my computer and the Caddy has eSATA and USB2 sockets.

Everthing works fine if I connect via USB2 but the external drive is not recognised when I connect with eSATA.

It may not make a lot of difference in practice but I would still like to be able to use eSATA.

Does anyone know why the e Sata drive isn't recognised?
Is this a Vista problem or perhaps there is a setting that needs adjusting?

Your comments and advice would be appreciated.

Is it recognised in Disk Management?
It wont be recognised in win until it is partitioned & formated.
BTW is not MS dropping support/selling LiveOne Care from mid 2009?

"gemius" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:c582765e1882688fc4b5768439b42920@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

On Tue, 20 Jan 2009 14:16:59 -0600, gemius <guest@xxxxxx-email.com>
wrote:
Have you installed the AHCI/RAID driver for the JMicron SATA
interface? Check Device Manager, SCSI and RAID Controllers.

gemius wrote:Try booting with the drive connected and on. You can also use Device
Manager to find it if your system is already running. My eSATA seems to
work just like a normal internal SATA drive, so I would have to say you
can't treat the eSATA the same as a USB drive.

Clark

Does Vista have native support for eSATA, and if so, for which chip sets,
how abouty yours. Or, do you need to install drivers into Vista for the
controller on the motherboard? (Note that under XP you would have had to
install drivers.)

Is the eSATA controller a RAID controller or non-RAID? If RAID, did you
build a RAID array? In some cases it is necessary to go through the
formality of building an array consisting of a single disk. In other cases
the controller will do that for you.

If the drive appears in the BIOS, but not in Vista, look into drivers. If
it does not appear in the BIOS, look into RAID settings. You may need to
press some key combination to getting into the RAID setting, separate from
getting into the BIOS setings. On my ASUS P4S8X the magic keys are "CTRL-F"
for the Fastrak controller..


"gemius" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:c582765e1882688fc4b5768439b42920@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

Look in the BIOS for a setting to enable AHCI for the eSata port. Without
that, drives will only be detected at boot time. With it enabled, drives
should be detected automatically whenever you connect, if the required AHCI
driver for the eSata controller is installed. You could also try opening
Device Manager and tell it to scan for hardware changes. I find automatic
recognition to be a little hit or miss on my Asus P5B motherboard, but it
mostly works. Backup speed using the native Vista complete backup is
significantly faster with eSata than USB.

"gemius" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:c582765e1882688fc4b5768439b42920@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

Thanks for all your replies. I'm a little further on but still can't get it to work!
I got the computer to recognise the external drive by booting with it switched on. It now appears in Computer with my other drives. LiveOne care also recognises it but it has (not connected) next to it, and it will not write to it.
I looked at the settings in the BIOS and in the Main menu I found.........
Configure SATA as [IDE] I changed this to [AHCI] but the computer just went into a loop and wouldn't start so I had to change it back.
If it helps I don't have a RAID configuration.
Looking at the comment by DL perhaps I would be better looking for another way to back up to the external drive than using Live OneCare?

There should be settings to change just the jMicron eSata to AHCI. You can't
change the hard disk connection between IDE and AHCI without reinstalling
Windows, or doing some clever fixing. The computer not starting up makes it
sound like you set the main Sata ports to AHCI instead of the eSata
controller. Once the eSata controller is in AHCI mode, you probably need to
install a driver for that controller. But I would think if the drive shows
up in Computer, it should be useable. Is it partitioned and formatted? Can
you copy files to it in Windows Explorer?

If you're using Vista then the builtin backup works very nicely, assuming
its included in whichever Vista edition you have. I think it's not in all
versions.

"gemius" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:240feff953ebdd8a6df57f0b41191a5b@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

Thank you for your comments but I'm still having problems. I found the JMicron SATA settings in the BIOS and changed it to AHCI but when I re booted the Ext Drive had disappeared from Computer and Disk Management. I changed it back to ADI and now I have the Drive back in them both.
I tried dragging and dropping a file into it and it worked so I don't think there ie anything wrong with the drive or that it needs Partitioning. However Live OneCare still won't write to it and while it knows it's there it still says the drive is not connected!

On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:07:30 -0600, gemius <guest@xxxxxx-email.com>
wrote:
Does the drive appear in Device Manager?