E-SATA MB ports appear to be dead

[videobruce]

The MB is a Foxconn N570SM2AA using a nForce 570 chipset. It has 6 SATA headers and a E-SATA on board port and a additional E-SATA MB header;
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/...c.aspx?ID=en-gb0000205]http://www.foxconnchannel.com/en-us/product/Motherboards/detail_spec.aspx?ID=en-gb0000205

I have a external HDD enclosure (Innovative ME-743J-SV) that has E-SATA and a USB connections;
http://www.anywareus.com/produ...closures/me743jsv.html]http://www.anywareus.com/products/enclosures/me743jsv.html

The USB port works ok. I just bought a new Hitachi 500 GB Deskstar SATA HDD and formatted it via the USB port since the E-SATA port didn't work so I know the drive is ok. I am also assuming the internal interconnect in the enclosure is ok since the USB port worked.
I tried two different SATA cables, one E-SATA and a plain SATA. The HDD doesn't show in Device Manager or Computer Management. It only showed when it had a USB connection.

Question; Is a E-SATA drive suppose to show in the Bios? It doesn't here. There are entries for the six on board SATA channels, but nothing for E-SATA.

[Paul Komski]

Your foxcon link doesn't work for me. I would guess the answer lies in the manual. As for eSATA and the BIOS I expect it varies from system to system but if there is a specific header that the drive is attached to (directly or indirectly) then it would seem logical to be able to enable/disable it in the BIOS setup.

The weak point of all SATA cable has been the connections and it was just this that mimicked your problem HERE (http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/580140-esata-drive-not-recognized.html).

[videobruce]

Try this link;
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/en-us/product/Motherboards/detail_spec.aspx?ID=en-gb0000205

I found it. It's called a "On board JMB 363 controller".
I don't use RAID and I thought it had something to do with a additional IDE channel. I had it disabled.
It's listed as a RAID controller. Typical poor documentation in the manual.

Next question; I was planning to use the E-SATA interface, but with this enabled I get an additional boot screen with this additional controller loading before the boot menu. I have no plans to boot from this drive. Would it be better just to use the USB interface? I'm not a USB fan since I just don't like putting various devices on the same bus even though that was what it was designed for.

Other than the boot feature, any other advantage to having the external drive on a SATA interface over a USB?
Any disavantages to useing USB?

[PrntRhd]

The main issue is speed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESATA#eSATA_in_comparison_to_other_external_buses

About 5 times as fast as USB 2.0

[Shaia]

Try this link;
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/en-us/product/Motherboards/detail_spec.aspx?ID=en-gb0000205

I found it. It's called a "On board JMB 363 controller".
I don't use RAID and I thought it had something to do with a additional IDE channel. I had it disabled.
It's listed as a RAID controller. Typical poor documentation in the manual.


There is an important lesson to be learned here:
Don't disable something if you don't know what it is.

[Paul Komski]

Don't disable something if you don't know what it is.It was/is disabled by default. Nothing to do with prior user intervention.

The Foxconn/Winfast documentation is notoriously poor and this manual is no exception.

As far as I can tell the seventh lone SATA and the back-panel eSATA ports only become functional once RAID is enabled and even if you don't actually configure either into any RAID array.

I expect that this pair of ports use a different chipset than the 6 on the NVidia controller. It may not be the case here but I have seen chipsets which only worked with and recognised SATA drives if configured as a sole RAID-0 (stripe) array. It is actually nonsensical to have just one drive in a functional array but some BIOS/firmware do actually allow it as a sort of 'kludge'.

The additional boot menu is a normal occurence whenever RAID is enabled even if no drives have been added or enabled specifically for RAID (which would normally be necessary if wanting to use any arrays, especially any bootable arrays, in your system). It is the BIOS area where one adds/deletes/configures the various RAID options/arrays. On this motherboard it can include both IDE and SATA drives though it is a good principle to only create arrays using very well matched drives of type and size.

The reason lying behind a SATA/eSATA pair (on other systems I have seen) is so that a mirror can be setup to allow duplication/backup of the data onto or from the external drive if so desired.

You haven't said if enabling the RAID has allowed the eSATA to now be recognised by the system - either in the main BIOS setup or in the RAID BIOS setup reached from the secondary boot menu.

For non-bootable arrays (certainly those using the nVidia chipset) there is software that can be installed to manage the arrays from within windows. The main advantage of eSata over USB is transfer speed of data. If that is not critical and you can get USB to function but not the eSATA you are not at a material disadvantage.

P.S. Final point. This is not a state of the art motherboard and SATA is still a fairly new technology. It is an area that has yet to bed down into a very standardised way. Most modern motherboards allow SATAs to be configured in IDE-emulation mode which often takes much of the guesswork out of troubleshooting.