ICH9-R / eSATA HD and SATA CDROM Oddity

Placement of this post may be open for argument however I think it’s really a chipset topic …

I have some interesting behavior with my Samsung SATA DVD Burner and my WD eSATA external hard drive.
When the eSATA hard drive is plugged into the eSATA port in the back of my shuttle PC and NOT turned on, it makes my DVD burner go nuts. After ejecting the tray, it goes right back in – either immediately, before its fully ejected or within a second after being ejected. That and I get I/O errors when trying to burn a CD with multiple burner apps – drive doesn’t even seem to spin up. Oddly enough the burner will read a DVD movie and play it just fine.

However when I turn ON the external drive, I get creamy goodness from the DVD burner. Burner works fine too when the eSATA cable is unplugged – problem just occurs when the external drive is plugged in and off. Also note that when in the BIOS and the eSATA drive is plugged in the back and off, the CD tray stays open - so problems seem to start after the POST test/within the operating system.

I am guessing that the ICH9-R chipset and/or Vista are getting confused with a eSATA device being plugged in the back but not turned on. If that’s the case, I can see where my SATA burner isn’t working. The fact that the tray won’t stay open tells me there is some activity with SATA and that it’s enough confusion to make the drive not work properly. I understand that the ICH9-R chipset doesn’t support hot swapping and “safely removing devices” via the sys tray too.

Soooo not really a problem that doesn’t have a work around (just unplug the eSATA cable when not in use), however it would be nice to just keep that drive plugged in and turn it on when needed.

Anyone else seen this or have a solution?? Thanks.

-roo