M6400 eSata Problems

Question

Bought the top of the line Lacie 4 Big Quadra 4TB (~$1000) and after a month and a never ending list of problems cannot get eSata to work properly. See below for M6400 details.

Days of hours dealing with Dell and Lacie tech suppport. Lacie has shipped 2 units and they have the same problems when connected via eSata to my M6400.
Problems such as unable to recognize 4TB which was eventually solved by connecting via USB, formatting GPT, etc. then switching over to eSata.

Now eSata marks 2TB as bad sectors on disk error check which I did because of 1.3MB/s transfer!

Dell says contact Lacie. Lacie says its the M6400 and I agree with Lacie. No problems when using USB connection.

Above problems are just a sample of the weird eSata problems which Lacie techs have not seen before. Is there a specific eSata driver that can be uninstalled and reinstalled without messing with M6400 internal HD's (which are RAID 0, see below)?

Any M6400 Vista 64bit user running eSata above 2 TB (and no problems)?

Strong preference to sort out eSata on this $5000 (excluding monitor) M6400 but Lacie 4TB comes with eStata, 1394b, 1394, and USB cables.

So next on the speed list is 1394b.

But the Lacie 1394 cable is the one that fits the M6400.

It looks like Dell made the older and slower 1394 available (which does not make sense).

Does the M6400 have 1394b or 1394?
Can one have different connector ends on 1394b?

I'm hopeing the M6400 is 1394b but with an older style connector to make it backward compatible with 1394 devices.
If so, where does one find a 1394b cable with a 1394b connector at one end and a 1394 at the other?

Last question for those with a 3008WFP. How do adjust the height? Do not answer this question unless you have one of these because the user manual is useless and DELL tech support cannot answer this (unbelievable) question on a $2000 monitor.

This expensive hardware was bought with the expectation that you get what you pay for and mainly to avoid (expensive) wasted time on tech problems. This system has cost me much more in wasted tech support time.

Many Thanks to anyone who can assist.

Dell Precision M6400 Mobile Workstation (factory configured): QX9300 (Intel quad core, 12MB cache), 16GB (DDR3-1066), FX3700M (1GB), 17" WUXGA RGB-LED (Samsung, 1920x1200), 1TB RAID 0 (2x ST9500420ASG), 2MP Camera, Dual array microphones, Dell 410 Ultra Wide Band/Bluetooth, Intel 5300 a/g/n, CD-DVD (+/-RW GS20N), Backlit keyboard, Vista Ultimate 64-bit, Coolslice, E/Port Plus 210W Port Replicator, UltraSharp 3008WFP 30" Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor with Height Adjustable Stand.

lavelle · Answer

Does anyone have their M6400 BIOS set to RAID and using the eSata port with no problems?

Another way of saying it, is anyone using two internal HD's as RAID 0 or RAID 1 and also using the M6400 eSata port with no problems?

lavelle · Answer

Nobody having eSata problems with their M6400?

Sebastienu · Answer

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I won't pretend that I had no pb with my M6400, another story which ends hapily with hdd and mother board replacement. My configuration is similar to yours.

To answer your question, I used eSata port with success to full backup and restore from Windows Vista 64. I used a single external drive 750Gb.

About RAID, after having changed my single HDD, the technician set the BIOS interface to storage to ATA before reinstalling Vista. This setting prevents eSata from being available. I had to set the Bios back to RAID (even if it has no sense with a single drive, so sure, no more RAID configuration) and reinstall a plain Vista before restoring my whole previous environment throught eSata. I may test it with a Thecus N7700 NAS if it can help.

Dell Precision M6400 Mobile Workstation (BIOS updated to A06): QX9300 (Intel quad core, 12MB cache), 16GB (DDR3-1066), FX3700M (1GB), 17" WUXGA RGB-LED (Samsung, 1920x1200), 500GB (1x ST9500420ASG), 2MP Camera, Dual array microphones, Dell 410 Ultra Wide Band/Bluetooth, Intel 5300 a/g/n, CD-DVD (+/-RW GS20N), Backlit keyboard, Vista Ultimate 64-bit.

ps: I was looking after M6400 + 3008WFP owner to ensure that full 2560*1600 resolution can be supported. Is it ??

ogbonnanta · Answer

I have a problem with my Optiplex GX280, on attempting to complete the boot, it stops after the DELL logo, does not progress to the XP logo. It reports the SATA cable as absent. When the CPU is opened and I fiddle with the blue SATA cable it works but once the CPU is closed the problem repeats itself. Once opened again and fiddled with it completes the boot sequence.

Second problem: After downloading Google Chrome, I am unable to open the browser to use it. I wonder if there is a problem with the registry or motherboard. After using another hard disk, same problem. Google Chrome works very well on another system I have (not DELL)

Thanks for any and every help

SamCKayak · Answer

My M4400 and LaCie 4Big [4Tb drive] work fine using USB. I've worked with both Dell and LaCie to identify the root cause of the eSATA problem. Both technical support organizations seem to agree that there is a Windows 7 driver problem for eSata disks over 2Tb in size. Partitioning does not help.

Symptoms on my M4400 include the connected LaCie properly shows 4Tb in size using Intel's Matrix Storage Manager to interrogate the drive. Windows 7 disk manager indicates the drive's size as 90Mb, far below the 4Tb size.

It is possible to partition and format the drive using USB, but rebooting the formatted drive using eSata as the connector will incorrectly show the second partition as OK. Any read / writes to that second partition will destroy the NTFS structure on that partition. It's a bad state.

There is very little on the net about this problem. I'm not convinced that any vendor Intel / Microsoft / Dell / LaCie has taken responsibility. I can find no record of the problem being in a queue anywhere to be resolved in a future release.

Nuts.

mellis67 · Answer

I had a similar issue with a Lacie 2TB Quadro (new black one) in Win7 64 bit m6400 laptop. When I would use the esata port, when I would try to write to the disk, it would start and then stop part way through. The drive would "disappear" from explorer and storage manager. I could read from the drive as long as I had written to it with usb port.

I installed the latest Intel Matrix storage manager. I had been having a problem where I would get a pause in the bios screen and then a white screen saying the drive was not recognized (if I had it plugged in pre-boot)--press f1 to ignore. When I installed the Intel Matrix Storage Manager from intel's site (8.9.0.1024), I now get a RAID setup screen at startup (although both the internal and lacie drives showed up as non-raid drives, the bios is set up with RAID). Its the screen where you have to press Ctrl-I to edit the setup. Thought I had solved the problem, but still had the same write issue. Copying files from my sd card slot, the internal hard drive, or my other usb pocket drives failed part way through with the LaCie drive dropping out. When it got into this state, unplugging the cable, then replugging it had no effect (the drive would not be subsequently recognized). Until I powered down the drive, then repowered, the drive wouldn't mount.

I didn't have any of these issue only with USB connection.

I then started to think about the write cache, both the windows side and the device (LaCie) side. I went into Administrative Tools->Computer Management-->Disk Management. Right click on the Lacie Drive and select properties. Go to the HardWare tab. Click on the LaCie drive in the list box. Press the properties button. Go to the policies tab uncheck "write caching on the device". I left the removal policy alone ("Better Performance"). Now I have copied about 100GB to the drive from my local hard drive, the sd card and other external pocket drives with no issue. It is not as fast as it could be, but it is definitely faster than USB.

Looks like there is a firmware issue or glitch between the write cache on the device and the amount of data being flowed to the device. It definitely acted like the device "got lost" because I would have to repower it to get windows to recognize it again.

Hope my experience can help someone.

ragerma · Answer

I have exactly the same problem. My laptop is a Studio 1747 with Core i7 and PM55 chipset. When I connect my Hotway Probox 8TB Raid 5 to its esata connector, only 1670GB was recognised. I have a desktop with core2 quad and asus 965 motherboard which works ok with the 8TB harddrive, so it is definitely an issue with Dell laptop. I'm using windows7 64bit but I dont' think it has anything to do with windows because the hard drive is recognised as 1670GB in the bios setting. I'm running A13 bios.

dj_palindrome · Answer

Dell M6400 with 'latest' BIOS (A11); Windows 7 SP1 x64; latest Intel RST AHCI SATA drivers; 2TB LaCie d2 Quadra v3.   Randomly disconnects and reconnects at least once per day sing eSATA.   The 'latest' BIOS is a joke. It still has the ancient Intel v8.0 Option ROM. Few of the issues fixes by later Intel RST drivers will be fixed unless the Intel OROM is also updated. This is supposed to be the job of OEMs, and I mean Dell.   I'm afraid this is typical Dell behavior. You pay thousands of dollars for their then-flagship product, which they all but abandon within a couple of years, before the thing is even fully depreciated.   Way to go, Dell!   I have one of your firmware-unupgradeable OEM Samsung SSDs I'm using as a paperweight too.

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M6400 eSata Problems

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