Esata on WD Home Edition

[red999]

What does it mean when I plug in my external HD with esata and the enclosure light does not turn on? It works fine with USB.

 

[canadian69]

Possibly a bad cable/connector or the port isn't enabled in the BIOS or OS

 

[EwanG]

In your BIOS, is the SATA (and by extension eSata) setup as IDE or AHCI? If IDE (default in most cases), then the external drive has to be turned on BEFORE the PC is turned on, or it won't be recognized. If you switch that to AHCI, your Windows won't boot unless you also edit your registry (since Windows by default doesn't load the AHCI driver).

More about this here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/244840-32-convert-sata-ahci-vista

 

[red999]

Thanks. So I figured out that there is a power button at the back of my external HD. So that what that thing is for... I never used it because my computer have always detected it via USB

 

[Paperdoc]

AH! An odd one, but it make sense. In its original form, eSATA ports have NO power to supply to an external device; hence, all eSATA external drives MUST have their own power supplies. (This has changed for some units now - there is a new system for eSATA that includes power supplied to the external.) BUT ALL USB ports have a limited amount of power available to their devices, and SOME external HDD's actually can run on that power. So it appears your external case with dual connection routes was able to run the unit entirely on power from the USB port without ever turning on its own internal power supply system, whereas the eSATA route never was designed to do that.

 

[red999]

Best answer selected by red999.