Esata drives not recognised installing windows

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Hi All
I have a small issue with two hard drives that are connected via docking stations using Esata on my win7 Home Premium 64bit.
During boot the bios sees them and lists them on the boot screen. But if I boot to CD to install any windows OS or to use the image backup to recover windows, then go to the drive section, the drives are not listed only the C: drive which is connected to internal sata.
Both drives are seen if connected via USB but then cannot use them for installing any OS.
How do I get the install program to see Esata connected drives?
Any hints will be appreciated.

Regards Clive

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Try connecting the internal SATA connector from the eSATA port to the C: drive connector to see if the eSATA drive is then seen on that port. If it is, see if you can work with it that way since you are booting from CD. I think you may have IDE emulation on in the BIOS so the C: sata drive is seen by the installation CD but as a whole the installation software is out of date as far as SATA compatibility goes. That’s my guess at least if the drives show in the BIOS but then aren’t all seen by the boot CD.

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Just a suggestion.Seeing that you have not describe the type of mobo.In the MANUAL of my Asus mobo in the bios,the main menu states;While entering the Setup,the BIOS automatically detects the presence of the SATA devices.THERE is a SEPARATE sub-menu for each device.Select a device item then press to display the SATA device information.
The BIOS automatically detects the values opposite the dimmed items(Device,Vendor,Size,LBA Mode,Block Mode,Async DMA,Ultra DMA,& SMART monitoring).These values are not set user-configurable.These items show NOT Detected if NO SATA device is installed in the system.
Now as we,ALL know every mobo is differnt.
I hope this helps you out abit.

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I suspect the driver for the eSATA drives does not load when you boot from CD. This may be a design decision by MS as you don’t want to install the OS on removable drives.

cheers, Paul

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I suspect the driver for the eSATA drives does not load when you boot from CD. This may be a design decision by MS as you don’t want to install the OS on removable drives.

Pretty much what I was saying/guessing but, if you can put the SATA controller into IDE emulation mode in the BIOS, then any CD that sees IDE drives will see emulated IDE drives over a SATA controller, thus one can then install on a eSATA drive, I’ve done it on one of my systems. However, not all mobos come with a BIOS that has the IDE setting, all my HP’s do but not all my Acer systems have it.

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Thanks all for helping
To answer your question re mobo it is an Asus striker extreme. With bios version 1901. I have not found anywhere that allows me to set Sata in IDE emulation mode but I may have missed something.

Hope this help investigation. Please do ask if you need any further info.

Clive

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Byron, SATA uses the same addressing scheme as IDE, the difference is in the electrical connection – IDE is parallel, SATA is serial.

Curious, why are you attempting to install Windows on an external drive?

cheers, Paul

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Byron, SATA uses the same addressing scheme as IDE, the difference is in the electrical connection – IDE is parallel, SATA is serial.

Curious, why are you attempting to install Windows on an external drive?

cheers, Paul

I have a hard drive connected internally that I use for running win 7 HP 64 bit. But I do not want to open my case to install a second hard drive to run XP Pro as a dual boot.
I am wondering why the install / repair disc can’t see the drives when connected by Esata only if connected via USB.

My brother has external Esata drives and has actually run his win 7 on it with no problems (except it ran slower than internal connection so he went back to internal drive) so was wondering what is wrong with my setup. He does have different hardware though (i5 motherboard, but most else same as me).

I also previously many months ago installed Linux Mint on an external drive but not sure if it was connected via USB or Esata at the time. May try it again but a bit worried as when I wanted my drive back ( as I did not like Linux much, I know I’m sad ) had a hard time getting it formatted back to NTFS due to Linux using a completely different format.

It is not a killer as far as system restoring an image is concerned as drives are seen when connected via USB so can use that even if t is slower. But it is an issue for dual booting OS’s without having to physically installing the drive internally.

Hope eventually to find a cure but know it will take some time unless it impossible. But My brother can do it so is possible unless it dependant on type of Mobo. (Mine Asus striker Extreme bios V1901).

But thanks to all that are trying to resolve this.
Clive

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Byron, SATA uses the same addressing scheme as IDE, the difference is in the electrical connection – IDE is parallel, SATA is serial.

Right, but the focus is on a boot disc not being able to see eSATA drive. eSATA uses the same SATA controller internally as all other SATA drives so its my supposition that the boot disc is not SATA controller aware (windows XP for example). So either the SATA controller driver has to be loaded just prior to installation (via integration or the F2 control key route in the case of XP) or the controller has to be taken out of AHCI mode and put into IDE mode in the BIOS so the SATA controller unaware disc can then see the disk. As far as I can recall, addressing was never mentioned.

Curious, why are you attempting to install Windows on an external drive?

It is a bit of an acedemic exercise for me personally, someday I want to experiment with installing to an eSATA drive and then switching over to the USB connection and see if I can get it to work. Doesn’t make any sense, its not useful, but I want to try it, though I wonder about USB3 and a fast SS drive–that might be interesting.

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Try this,go into your bios set up.Go to;Advance then PCI PnP highlight Plug & Play O/S then press enter.Then set it NO.I’m quoting from your manual;When set to [No],the Bios configures all the devices in the system.When set to [Yes] & if you install a Plug & Play os,the operating system configures the Plug & Play devices NOT required for boot.
Personally I always set this to,NO AFTER I get done doing a fresh install.Plus change the 1st boot device from the cd-rom to my hard drive.

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Try this,go into your bios set up.Go to;Advance then PCI PnP highlight Plug & Play O/S then press enter.Then set it NO.I’m quoting from your manual;When set to [No],the Bios configures all the devices in the system.When set to [Yes] & if you install a Plug & Play os,the operating system configures the Plug & Play devices NOT required for boot.
Personally I always set this to,NO AFTER I get done doing a fresh install.Plus change the 1st boot device from the cd-rom to my hard drive.

Thanks for tips Ron
I have already set bois to be the one to setup plug and play.
I cannot set hard drive to be first boot as I would then be unable to use CD to get to repair option and I find it makes no noticeable difference to boot times if CD is first the HDD second.

Thanks anyway
Clive

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Hi All and thanks for all the help.

I have found a way round the problem. The problems was as someone stated there were no sata drivers installed during boot mode only when get to windows.
Found a download for my sata drivers and copied them to a floppy disc (yes I do have a USB floppy drive). Once get to part where it says can’t find an image backup I click on advance tab and tell it to look for drivers from the floppy, which it duly installs then I can see the drive with the backup. This allows me to use Esata as hoped.

Only problem is I have to do this every time as although it appears to have installed the drivers it appears to be installed only to a temporary place.
But I can live with this but would be nice if drivers could be installed when CD is booting up but have no idea how to add this to a CD repair disc.

Again very grateful for all the assistance given by everyone.

Clive

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Clive,

You need to add the drivers to the boot CD. There will be instructions for creating a new boot CD with the drivers.

cheers, Paul

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Clive,

You need to add the drivers to the boot CD. There will be instructions for creating a new boot CD with the drivers.

cheers, Paul

Thanks PT can find no instructions in file list to tell me how to add the drivers to the boot CD.
I would have to copy an iso image to my desktop or folder first but have no idea how to edit an iso file to add the drivers so can burn iso back to a cd.

Any advice on doing this would be very nice

Thanks again for all you assistance.
clive

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For a standard non-SATA aware OS install disc, like XP for instance, the process you want to follow is called slipstreaming or integration. I would go to YouTube and look up the Carey Holzman page and watch the driver pack integration videos (he also does service pack integration videos which is a similar process) or just look up slipstreaming with NLite on Google.

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For a standard non-SATA aware OS install disc, like XP for instance, the process you want to follow is called slipstreaming or integration. I would go to YouTube and look up the Carey Holzman page and watch the driver pack integration videos (he also does service pack integration videos which is a similar process) or just look up slipstreaming with NLite on Google.

Thanks Byron
will look into it
But surprised win 7 Home premium 64bit OS disc does not have sata drivers.

Thanks again for help

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Thanks everyone for all your help

With your help have now sorted it part from learning how to slip stream.
Found installing OS on Esata not worth it as runs so slowly as not usable.

So this thread can now be closed. can’t find any options to mark post as solved or closed so sending this post.

Regards
Clive

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