I have just acquired a 1TB external with esata. Luckily my desktop has a esata port so i can use this data transfer method. However I have a slightly annoying problem with it, if my system is on and logged in and i turn the external on, nothing happens and windows does not recognise the external through esata (but would if it was through usb). Now if I have the external on before i boot my system, windows recognises it. I am guessing this has something to do with the boot log enabling the esata port upon boot when it is detected at boot. Is there a way I can permanently enable the esata port, so I could just turn my external on, say, right now and it would be recognised?
Don't know which e-SATA drive you have but certainly a lot of the early ones (c 18 months ago) didn't support "hot-plugging". Haven't looked recently to see if that has improved, but that should be your first check.
For example, Seagate FreeAgent XTreme is an eSATA external drive...and according to one review I saw, that particular model sometimes needs the connection re-set after the drive has been idle. So maybe the interface isn't suitable for USB-style hot-plugging.
Probably be more use if someone with experience of these devices could comment further.
To enable hotplugging support for e-sata, your SATA controller needs to be in AHCI mode, and appropriate AHCI drivers need to be installed in windows.
Your motherboard is most likely set to standard SATA mode, and you will need to change it in the BIOS.
But before you do that, you have to enable the AHCI driver in windows, otherwise it won't boot when you change the SATA mode. To do this in windows vista/7, take a look here.
Hopefully your motherboard is new enough to support AHCI properly.
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