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112428
March 25th, 2009 20:00
Optiplex 755 and external eSATA Problem
I do have an Optiplex 755 and just bought a WD Studio II External Hard Drive. I can connect and see the drive fine via USB. But I am not able to get the drive show up under eSATA. I turned on External ESATA in the BIOS with no luck. I followed all the instructions provided by WD to install it - no luck. I bought 2 ESATA Low Profile Port Adapters for Dell OptiPlex 755 Desktop and connected them - neither one seems to pick up the drive. I upgraded to the latest BIOS - no luck.
Any idea on how to get that drive to show up? As mentioned - it works fine under USB.
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Dave576
170 Posts
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May 2nd, 2009 03:00
nsusa,
I have been searching the Dell forum to get my eSATA connection working and found the info I needed. During my search I have seen several recommendations.
Looks like you have your BIOS set correctly, but...
Maybe double check your BIOS SATA mode.
From another thread
haiduc
Joined on 10/21/2007
Posts: 7
Points 0
Re: How to determine if system is in AHCI mode?
15 Nov 2007 09:42AM
Quote from Intel*:
"Serial ATA (SATA) modes
The SATA controller has three modes of operation:
* IDE mode - no AHCI, no RAID
* SATA mode (sometimes called AHCI mode) - AHCI enabled, no RAID
* RAID mode - AHCI enabled, RAID enabled
NOTE: Your system may not have all three options, depending on the motherboard manufacturer and model."
* http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imst/sb/cs-015988.htm
I'm not talking of (P)ATA (which is old) but SATA.
Anyway, I figured out that choosing IDE really is just the IDE mode (without AHCI), which is contrary to what Dell support told me. I can tell because I managed to install XP again without any supplementary driver and it works just the same. Moreover the driver used for the controller is pciide.sys.
So my next question would be: if we can't enable SATA mode (AHCI enabled, no RAID) in the BIOS, can we enable RAID mode (which implicitly enables AHCI) and then just choose not use the RAID feature but to have 2 independent disks operating in SATA mode?
I'm asking because I want to be sure that I can enable the RAID option without messing up the data on my second hdd.
Check which SATA mode you are using, this might effect the eSATA connection. But, if you were able to enable eSATA in your BIOS it should be OK. I'm using AHCI/RAID controller with no HDD in RAID and everything is working fine.
Have you tried booting your computer with the external HD connected and turned on? This might help find the problem. You can't hot plug eSATA in IDE mode. At least I couldn't on my system, but it would boot up if the external was connected and powered.
The eSATA port adapter should work if the driver installation went well. Try re-installing the drivers.
The other thing I saw on a couple of threads was cable problems. Pick up a reasonable quality cable and try it again. I saw several problems resolved by this.
Hope this helps, I'm not an expert, but have been just been through some of these issues.
Good luck
Dave
chadspecht
1 Message
0
June 3rd, 2009 19:00
I'm having the same problem. Optiplex 755 w/ A13 BIOS....all internal SATA's enabled and connected (2 hard drives, 2 DVD drives), and the eSATA enabled as well. I have a eSATA low profile connector connected to the eSATA port on MB. I've got a Cables Unlimited USB 2.0/eSATA Desktop HDD Dock.....USB connects and is detected just fine. eSATA connected, but BIOS is unable to determine HD....Windows does not see it either.
Help!