ICH9R/P35 SATA Hot Plug Problem

[rbd]

I have been struggling with VISTA Home Premium on a GA-EP35-DS3R MB for a few months. One problem is the inability to get hot-plug eSATA drives to work properly. I finally got VISTA to recognize an external eSATA drive (bare Seagate 300GB connected via eSATA and power cable- no case) plugged into the Intel ICH9R/P35 SATA ports (had to rebuild VISTA with the BIOS SATA Raid option turned on and supply a SATA driver during the VISTA build via a USB floppy.)

But I cannot get VISTA to remove the eSATA drive with the Safely Remove Hadrware icon in the Notification Area. The eSATA drive does not show up there. If I right-click on the ESATA drive in Explorer there is no Eject or Safely Remove option.

Has anyone found a how to get VISTA to Safely Remove a hot-plugged eSATA drive attached via an ICH9R port?

Thanks.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

The driver for the SATA controller must support hot-swap. I believe I've seen before that the Intel ICH9R driver does not support hot-swap, even though it supports eSATA signaling (those two things seem like they should go together, but they're actually separate specifications of the SATA standard).

I think the 3rd-party program HotSwap can add Safely Remove Hardware icon/Hot Swap capability to several SATA chipsets, including the ICH9R.

 

[rsetter1]

You have to Enable AHCI in BIOS

 

[panicatak]

If you install the matrix software hot plug then works

 

[knotknut]

SATA RAID/AHCI Mode (Intel ICH9R Southbridge)
Enables or disables RAID for the SATA controllers integrated in the Intel ICH9R Southbridge or
configures the SATA controllers to AHCI mode.
Disabled Disables RAID for the SATA controllers and configures the SATA controllers to
PATA mode. (Default)
RAID Enables RAID for the SATA controllers.
AHCI Configures the SATA controllers to AHCI mode. Advanced Host Controller
Interface (AHCI) is an interface specification that allows the storage driver to
enable advanced Serial ATA features such as Native Command Queuing and
hot plug.

 

[rbd]

Thanks for the replies.

When I enable ICH9R ACHI in the BIOS it does not result in SATA hot plug working. If If I install the Intel Matrix driver it makes no difference. (Just reloaded my ACHI C: configuration and tested these combinations.)

Using the same ACHI C: configuration I installed HotSwap. Cannot get HotSwap to work.


If the BIOS ICH9R RAID is turned on (this also turns on ACHI) (and the Raid driver is installed in VISTA) then Vista will recognize when a SATA drive is plugged in. But the drive cannot be Safely Removed.

Using the same RAID C: configuration HotSwap seems to work and allows hot plug operation of a 80GB SATA drive. Another 300GB SATA drive can be plugged in and then removed, but subsequent attempts to plug the drive in fails (bad drive?). Also had one ocurance of a BSOD "Bad_Pool_Caller" after plugging in the 80GB SATA drive. Starting tomorrow I will continue testing and see if the ICH9R RAID / HotSwap combination proves acceptably stable.


And yes, as "knotknut" replied, the Intel ICH9R Manual does state that the hardware supports hot plugging.


From my perspective, the ICH9R, whether due to hardware or driver software, is not one of Intel's better ideas. I'm on the borderline of dumping this MB. Any suggestions for a replacement that doesn't use ICH9R/P35?