eSATA / AHCI Question

Davinator · Post by **Davinator** » Tue May 26, 2009 10:57 am

I am putting together a new computer this week and have been planning to give eSATA a try for an external HD for backup storage given the speed advantage it has over USB 2.0.

I've read enough to have considered not trying the F6 method of installing AHCI drivers during the Windows XP install (the motherboard is an ASUS P5Q-EM, so ICH10R Southbridge) and just using the SSD I bought for the system in IDE mode.

Then it occurred to me that of the few advantages of AHCI I didn't think I'd need, hot-swapping may be what eSATA requires.

Does turning on and off a SATA HD in an external enclosure in the way most do with a USB enclosure count as the "hot-swapping" I need AHCI for?

Will I need the AHCI drivers to even use an eSATA enclosure externally?

Alternatively,

If the SSD to be used internally is the Intel X-25E (32 GB), do I really lose anything just going with IDE mode for the SATA controller?

Thanks for your thoughts,

Dave

DaveLessnau · Post by **DaveLessnau** » Tue May 26, 2009 11:37 am

My personal experience with eSATA is not all that pleasant. The speed over USB is great. But, the connecting/disconnecting bit has always given me problems. First, though, I'd like to note that from what I've seen, you have to have AHCI enabled for your Intel SSD to work (search for AHCI at the following link):

http://www.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd ... 029623.htm

Next, just for completeness, if you don't have at least AHCI turned on (i.e., you're running in IDE mode), then "hot swapping" won't work. You can get around this by turning your eSATA connected drive on and then going to Device Manager and having it rescan for new devices (it's "scan for hardware devices" in Windows 7 -- I don't remember what it is in Vista or XP). It should then find the drive (you might have to right-click on the drive in Device Manager and Enable it to get it to work). Without hot-swapping, you also won't get a "disconnect hardware" type of icon in the System Tray like you would with a USB drive. So, to disconnect the eSATA drive, you'll have to go back to Device Manager, right-click on the drive, and then Disable it. Unfortunately, it might say the change won't take affect until after you reboot. But, I haven't had any problems just turning the drive off after that (I'm pretty sure the buffers have all been flushed and everything's been written to the disk -- it's just waiting to change the hardware lists until after a reboot).

With AHCI (or RAID) enabled, you should be able to hot-swap (getting that "disconnect hardware" icon as with a USB drive). The downside is that it will probably increase your boot time. With my old ECS motherboard, I had no problems with this. But, with my more recent Intel motherboard (since removed), I couldn't get hot-swapping to work once the computer had entered and left Sleep mode.

Also, and even more annoying, some utilities won't recognize the eSATA as a removable device. This is almost a sure thing without AHCI turned on. But, even with AHCI or RAID turned on, I've had problems backing up to a hot-swapped eSATA drive. If you plan on backing up to an eSATA connected drive, make sure you test whether or not your backup software sees the drive as removable or not. It's possible that your software will allow you to write the backup anywhere, though. In that case, it won't matter.

Davinator · Post by **Davinator** » Tue May 26, 2009 12:09 pm

DaveLessnau:

I had no idea eSATA gave you a "disconnect hardware" icon like USB as I never saw it in action before, but I'm glad to hear it's similar, though disappointed to hear an opinion it doesn't work as smooth as USB does for me.

For clarity, as I jumped around a bit in my post, it's an actual hard drive in an external enclosure I'll be using. I've used USB 2.0, but comparing 480 Mpbs to 3 Gbps w/ eSATA seemed to make eSATA more attractive for this computer.

The SSD is for the system internally. I'm surprised at the link since I built this exact configuration for a family member in December for Christmas and didn't bother with F6 and the installation went smoothly. (Windows XP Pro SP3) The SSD runs amazingly fast for his purposes and I figured since I know the hardware combo works, and I've time for my own computer now I'd just duplicate the purchases. If I'm reading the link correctly that you posted, though I may just be re-interpreting it, the AHCI gets you the SATA II command extensions. I'm definitely going to have to go through that machine's BIOS the next time I visit, though, just to see what settings I gave it. I assumed it was just simple IDE for all the disks. (There was a SATA DVD drive in that machine, too.)

I thought by "hot-swapping" for AHCI people were using it to swap in/out their internal drives. That's pretty disappointing to hear eSATA doesn't work as smooth as USB. Knowing it'll work reliably looks like it will make me stick with USB, even at one sixth the data rate.

Dave

lm · Post by lm » Tue May 26, 2009 12:09 pm

"F6 method" worked like a charm for me, and why shouldn't it?

And then linux, boots either way, you can go and change the bios setting without reinstalling or in any way modifying the OS.

Davinator · Post by **Davinator** » Tue May 26, 2009 12:12 pm

Im,

I do have the floppy ready, having extracted the files from the latest Intel file online, so I guess F6 is the way to go.

Is it still the accepted point of view that choosing RAID over AHCI in the BIOS is the way to go even if I'm not going to build an array?

Dave

DaveLessnau · Post by **DaveLessnau** » Tue May 26, 2009 2:03 pm

This is going to be pretty chaotic as it responds to several posts. First, if you're sure you'll never build a RAID array, then just go with the AHCI. The "RAID-Ready" thing is just to make things easier if you ever decide to go RAID. In my past systems, just enabling AHCI with my ECS motherboard added a small delay to the system boot-up while the dedicated JMicron eSATA port was initialized. With my Intel board, I went with a "RAID-Ready" BIOS setup (no RAID array) and had a 30 second wait during POST while the system looked for an array (that got better over some BIOS updates). With my Gigabyte, I'm running in "IDE mode" and there's no delay. There's no sense in setting things up in the BIOS that you'll never use if it causes a delay that will just irritate you.

"Hot swapping" just means the ability to connect and disconnect drives without turning off the computer. Internal or external doesn't really make a difference. After all, how would the computer "know" if a drive is inside the case or outside of it? For instance, with my current Gigabyte motherboard, I get an eSATA port by connecting Gigabyte's eSATA back-panel "card" to an internal SATA port (an Intel one in this case, but I could have used the JMicron one and loaded another driver). As far as the computer is concerned, anything connected via that connector is just a SATA drive. It's only "e"SATA because the connector and drive are outside the computer. Hot swapping would/should be available for any non-system SATA drive connected (internally or externally) if I had AHCI turned on.

Don't let my quibbling keep you from trying it. How the hot-swapping works is probably very dependent on your motherboard and drivers. What I'd recommend is running a quick (well, relatively quick, anyway) test. Set your BIOS for AHCI (some also have a separate "enable eSATA" option, too). Install XP with the F6 option. Once XP is up and running, but before loading anything else or doing any customization, try connecting your eSATA device and see if you get the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon. Use that to remove the device and turn it off. Put your computer into sleep mode and bring it back. Ditto on the connect/disconnect. If you're going to back up to an eSATA device, load up your software and see if it offers the eSATA device as a target to store your backup. If it does, go ahead and load everything up. If that stuff doesn't work and if there's no discernible pause on booting your system, I'd leave it that way anyway and try using that Device Manager work-around. I've also heard of a utility called HotSwap that will give you the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon. You could try that.

Turning off an eSATA drive (like a USB drive) without using that "Safely Remove Hardware" icon risks data loss/corruption.

You're right about that link of mine regarding Intel's SSD and AHCI: that could purely be for enabling those extensions and not for regular operation of the drive. Unfortunately, I can't give you a definitive answer as I have no experience with SSDs.

DaveLessnau · Post by **DaveLessnau** » Tue May 26, 2009 2:13 pm

Oh, and just as a side-note: since you're going to be using an SSD, and you're re-building your system anyway, you might consider trying out the Windows 7 Release Candidate. First, it, like Vista, doesn't need an F6 install for AHCI. Secondly, it's supposed to have modifications to help with SSDS (turning off the swap file, turning off the defragmenter on the SSD volume, etc.). It's good for about a year from now (June 1, 2010 -- with bi-hourly shutdowns starting March 1, 2010). Here's the Microsoft link:

http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/Window ... nload.aspx

That assumes you've got the time to play with things like that and don't have anything mission critical on that computer (and do back-ups early and often). I've been running it here for about a month and it's dead stable.

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Tue May 26, 2009 4:34 pm

I installed XP on my ICH10R system using a disc that I made with nLite which also included slipstreamed Intel AHCI and RAID drivers, so I did not need to do the F6 thing. After installation, I did not get the "safely remove hardware" icon, but the HotSwap utility mentioned solves that problem nicely.

However, with my particular motherboard (Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R) I had issues with both AHCI and RAID mode on my motherboard. For some reason, using either AHCI or RAID mode would cause randomly occurring BSODs involving the Intel iaStor.sys driver whenever either of my PCI cards were installed. It worked flawlessly when both the PCI slots were empty though. Never was able to resolve this, so I put my PCI cards back in and reinstalled without AHCI. No issues in IDE mode.

My external hard drive is connected to the motherboard port using an eSATA bracket, so without AHCI it just appears like any other hard drive connected to the ICH10R controller. If it is present at boot time, it will show up in Windows. If I connect and power it up while Windows is running, it will not show up unless I go into device manager and use "Scan for hardware changes". I haven't installed HotSwap yet though, so I'm not sure if that works without AHCI or not.

fuji0030 · Post by **fuji0030** » Wed May 27, 2009 4:06 am

With AHCI (or RAID) enabled, you should be able to hot-swap (getting that "disconnect hardware" figure as with a USB drive). The downside is that it will apparently access your cossack time. With my old ECS motherboard, I had no problems with this. But, with my added contempo Intel motherboard (since removed), I couldn't get hot-swapping to plan already the computer had entered and larboard Sleep mode.

Riffer · Post by **Riffer** » Wed May 27, 2009 4:23 am

I have eSATA on both my systems so that I can use an external eSATA hard drive for backup. Both systems are Windows XP.

System 1 - Internal drives are SCSI, so you cannot enable RAID or AHCI on the ICH10R controller. Fortunately, the eSATA on the motherboard is provided by a jMicron controller. This acts identically to an add-on card, so drivers do not need to be loaded with F6 and may be loaded after XP is installed.

System 2 - Internal drives are SATA. eSATA is provided by the ICH10R controller. RAID is enabled in the BIOS and drivers must be loaded using the F6 process.

The eSATA drives in both systems are hot-swappable and removeable using the "Safely Remove Hardware" tray tool.

For completeness, I should mention that I have had three ICH10R boards, and despite a multitude of different configurations and settings, I was never able to get eSATA to work properly when booting with SCSI drives. In these cases, I used an add-on Promise card for eSATA and it worked fine.

Davinator · Post by **Davinator** » Wed May 27, 2009 4:42 am

I'm amazed there's such a variety of experiences with eSATA. I had thought before it would be as consistent as USB. Thank you all for your situtations and suggestions. My drives will be internal SATA drives, so I won't have the SCSI issue mentioned. I am going to try the F6 install for AHCI just to see how it goes and for the experience. Nice to know, though, that an add-on card for eSATA works smoothly with after-install drivers. That sounds like a great way to go with a non-F6 install if necessary but then still get eSATA functionality afterward.

DaveLessnau, once I am up and running on this computer as my primary, I had planned on building a second based on the mini-ITX board SPCR recently featured on the main page that's socketed for the Core2Duo. That's where I'll likely try Windows 7. I am curious, though, why you get shutdowns every two hours from March through June next year. Are they expecting you to have bought the released OS by then? Does that mean they expect the OS released by March to be penalizing their RCs with shutdowns?

Dave

DaveLessnau · Post by **DaveLessnau** » Wed May 27, 2009 6:25 am

Davinator wrote:I am curious, though, why you get shutdowns every two hours from March through June next year. Are they expecting you to have bought the released OS by then? Does that mean they expect the OS released by March to be penalizing their RCs with shutdowns?

I think that's just Microsoft's way to make sure people aren't surprised by the RC "license" expiring in June. It'll give people time to buy the released version without the system just up and dying one day without warning.