Win 10 on MSI Z97 MB: cannot get hot swap port to work

[car-nuts]

I use Win 10 Pro 64-bit. My Rosewill Blackhawk case has a hot-swap port recessed in it's top and plugged to a SATA port on the MSI Z97 motherboard, which has all SATA ports set to Hot Plug in AHCI mode. I wish to make backups quick and easy, and protect the backup by removing the drive, thus the desire to use the hot-swap port.

When I plug a SATA hard drive into the hot-swap port I hear the tinkle-tones indicating that something was added, and the hot-swap drive appears in Device Manager, but the drive never appears in Disk Management, even after a rescan.

The hard drive works fine if plugged to an internal hard drive bay and then Win 10 is booted; if plugged to the hot-swap bay before booting, Win10 hangs on the Win 10 logo.

What am I doing wrong?

 

[Colif]

which MSI Z97 as they have a few? DO you have the latest BIOS/motherboard drivers?

 

[car-nuts]

I don't know "which MSI Z97", mine is circa early 2015, named PC Mate. I believe I have bios release 4.7; there are newer releases but the info I read about them does not mention anything about hot-swap or hard drives. I don't want to risk changing the bios except as a last resort... too many stories about trashing MB's trying to update bios.

The hard drive I am wanting to swap in is a 4tb drive with one big GPT partition on it; it works fine if attached to an internal bay before booting, but hangs the startup if Win 10 is booted with it plugged into the external hot-swap ramp/bay. There are normally 4 internal hard drives (0 through 3).

I also tried inserting a 120gb SSD (a smaller copy of my Win 10 sysres) in the hot-swap bay, and that drive does show up in disk management temporarily, but as disk 8 "Unknown", "Not initialized" and "unallocated", and then it eventually drops out of disk management and a rescan fails to bring it back.

Those symptoms make me wonder if perhaps the power cable for that port is not connected. I think I've had instances in the past where utilities read some basic drive info even when a drive is not powered up. I need to go through the wiring inside the case again tomorrow to re-verify that the hot-swap port is getting power (it is very cramped for space, extremely hard to see the wiring path, hard to tell anything without disconnecting and removing a lot of cables; I may need to remove the top of the case in order to check the connectors on the backside of the hot-swap port, which is recessed into that top). The data cable is obviously connected, but I need to double-check the power cable at both ends.

 

[Colif]

For future reference: Your motherboard - I was expecting a gaming 5 or 7 so good thing I didn't guess

this might help - its setting up a raid but its same motherboard and he wants hot swap

You likely have two sata chip set controllers on your motherboard.
You will have look up in your manual what chip set uses what Sata ports of the motherboard.
From looking at your motherboard you have two Sata ports set a side, both in black.
You should connect your Sata SSD to the first set of Sata ports of the board.

And the two Drives you intend to raid to the two black Sata ports.

The main chip set the SSD drive, is connected to set as Ahci mode.
And the two WD drives on the two black Sata ports set to Raid.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2932434/raid-setup.html

 

[car-nuts]

RESOLVED!!!

I suspected the drive wasn't getting power, so I bought a long SATA extension cable (integrated plugs but separate cables for data and power) to use as a test cable for the case-top hot-swap port that was not working.

I plugged one end into the hard drive and used an Exacto knife to separate the other plug into power and data connectors. Then I alternately plugged the loose connectors into plugs at the hot-swap station and into known working ports elsewhere in the case, and soon discovered power was fine at the hot-swap port but that the (hot-swap port) data cable had to be plugged into the first motherboard SATA port in order for the hot-swap port to work... despite the fact that all my SATA ports were defined in the bios as hot-pluggable.

The hot-swap port on my now-not-so-new computer is finally functional.