eSATA port is not working in my Studio XPS 13

[Beryl]

Hi friends,

I just purchased a new Studio XPS 13 laptop and faced some issue and still having problem and related to eSATA port that is not easily working at all.

I have an external enclosure with two 1.5 TB HDD's in it working in JBOD mode and I have no problem with connecting it to my desktop through eSATA. Same goes with connecting my enclosure to my laptop through eSATA port in Sweex Express-card controller - no problems, works great. However, if I connect the enclosure to the combo eSATA/USB port on my laptop,there is nothing going to be happen at all. Drives are not detected in BIOS as well, and leaving my enclosure connected while booting up leads to initial BIOS loading screen hanging.

Thanks.

[RoninBlade]

I had been using an ESATA drive at 3.0gbps and figured out that it was sometimes leading to my OS locking up, and also at some points of time occurring the system to hang in BIOS at within POST sequence. The odd thing is that it is assumed to occur more readily after the laptop has warmed up.

For example, while system goes to starts it gets hang at POST, it continuously hanging there upon subsequent power cycles but if I turn the system off and let it cool off then it POSTs in appropriate manner again.

Anyways,Before one week , I installed a jumper on my disk drive (wd1001fals) to limit it to 1.5gbps. No more hangs even after the laptop has warmed up. Now it sounds like a hardware bug; I wouldn't expect 3.0gbps esata to ever work in well on this laptop during this section.

[Rawko]

Hotplugging should work well with esata, where as inside windows, you are assumed to click on 'safely remove...' to be sure that the file-system is quiesced first. Otherwise you might interact with some file-system errors that would need chkdisk. Though with ntfs. According to me, such errors would be cleaned up automatically.

As for the hanging, it seems like you are back to 3.0gbps problem - are you confirm your jumper is still functioning? You need to check the disk's negotiated speed within device manager.

[T.J.]

Hello ,
Would you please take a look into your Event Viewer and tell me , if you are getting any nvstor-related bugs means errors and/or warnings or what? Just need to be sure that the issue has the same symptoms.

I don't think that's a hardware problem actually, It is sounds me more like IRQ trouble, especially taking into consideration that SATA controller divides its IRQ 19 with USB host and PCI-PCI bridge and use the sharing method.

[Killen]

Like so many users, i also had this problem and tried to solve yourself. if I use the newer sata drivers(11.1.0.23) and better if I use the older ones (10.3.0.42), If I use the older drivers, entire drives will be activated and if plugged in directly (cable only, no case).

Samsung HM500LI (@300) works either direct or in a welland ME601J (Sata Dock).

Samsung HD103UJ (@300 or @150) works direct with the 10.3 drivers, but crashes in the Dock with either driver.

Update:
Now I run the E-Sata Cable directly to the data port of the hard drive also modified my own external box any hard drive I put in work @150, so many crash if set to 300.