Question regarding XPS 410 (Dimension 9200) and eSATA connection

No one ? :emotion-6:

Sorry for the double post... :emotion-6:

volkicik,

As far as I can tell the main problem is when you connect the eSATA cable to your SATA port then the computer has no way of knowing if it's not internal, so you won't get the 'safely remove hardware' icon. 

Don't know if your MB supports hot swap, try a search on this forum or in Dell Tech support. Mine supports hot swap but didn't actually work because it is connected to the SATA port..

Installed the cable from my SATA port to the eSATA bracket, no card, and it was working but not hot swappable.

I did find a way to get it hot swappable. 

Check in BIOS  that you are set to AHCI or RAID mode and not IDE. This is not a simple selection to change, if you change the selection in BIOS and restart you won't have the correct drivers loaded and you will get a blue screen. 

If your BIOS is not set to AHCI or RAID you can change easily, look here How to switch to AHCI/RAID mode in BIOS without re-installing the OS.

You can load the AHCI or RAID drivers then when you restart go to the BIOS and switch it to AHCI or RAID when the computer boots you can load Matrix Storage Manager if your using RAID setting in Bios. You don't have to have any hard drives in RAID if you don't want to.

When/if BIOS is set to AHCI/RAID mode, download and install the Hotswap program from the HotSwap site. 

This program will check if the hard drive(s) are being used and if not will clear the cache, then give you a message like the 'Safely remove Hardware' does.

Had a little trouble, this program wouldn't start from the 'start up' folder or any other way so I created a task for this program to start at Logon. Here's how:

How to Create a Task in Vista Task Scheduler

Hope this helps,

Reply here if you have any questions, I can give more details if needed.

Dave

Hi Dave,

Thanks very much for your reply and the links to HotSwap site. I am already in AHCI/RAID mode. I have few HDs connected already. I'll download the software and try to see if I can remove them. If so, I'll get a "bracket" with eSATA connections.

Thanks again!

Hi volkicik,

How are your HDs connected now?

The regular 'Safely remove hardware' should work if they are connected via USB. The Hotswap program states it will work on 'Safely removable devices' but I haven't tried that yet. If they are connected to a SATA port Hotswap should let you 'safely remove' them. Sometimes it says it can't remove the hard drive because another program is using it or it's 'waiting for a re-boot'. I've ensured that no programs were using the external drive, found that MS Word will hold it up even if no files are open at the time or any files from my external were opened or had been open, closing Word will let Hotswap clear the drive and it will tell you that 'you can now remove the drive'. Haven't found any way to get around the 'waiting for a re-boot' message.

Sometimes it takes a couple of minutes to give you the message box 'You can now safely remove the drive'.

Most of the time, maybe 95%+, it allows me to remove the drive(s).

Let me know how this works for you.

Regards,

Dave

Hi Dave,

Thanks again for your reply.

Here is my HD configuration in my XPS 410.

HD1 : System drive for running Windows, programs, etc

HD2 and HD3 : RAID1 mirror for My Documents

HD4 : Standalone for dual boot, experimentation, etc.

When I run the HotSwap, it shows HD2 (as a single drive of course) and HD4 as removable HDs. Since I dont want to deal with removing the RAID drives, I tried it with HD4 and it worked without any problems. It seems like I should be able to run a bracket and HotSwap the external drives.

The software is nice, because I can "run" it any time I need it, and exit it when not needed. Since I will be using the eSATA HDs only for backup occasionally, this works out great. I am using it with XP Pro at the moment, but will be upgrading to Windows 7 soon. I assume it would work with 7 as well, since it is compatible with Vista 32 and 64.

The other question I have now is regarding the length of the cables. The bracket I am planning to buy has 15" cables. The eSATA cable I have is about 3 feet, which could be little short. Would it be a problem if I buy a 6 feet eSATA cable to connect my external HD?

Thanks again for your time and help!