Changing Just One Driver

[Worn]

I need to change the SATA driver to the third party eSATA driver. I don't need to change anything else. This will get hot swap working for the three-drive hot swap cage I have installed. I determined this by starting with a fresh OS X install and using that eSATA driver and booting to it.

Now I need to apply this change to my normal boot drive but I do not wish to change anything else!

How can I change just this one driver?

Note that I have no record of the current drivers or the MultiBeast configuration used to build the machine as I am not the builder and the actual builder seems to have made no record. I'm just trying to correct the driver to get hot swap working.

Unless there is a utility that can examine a volume that MultiBeast modified and tell me what configuration was used, I'm probably better off trying to change just this one driver than trial-and-erroring in an attempt to replicate what I already have, minus the SATA driver, of course.

 

[brickpower]

Run Multibeast and click on "Drivers". Select Disk and check the driver you need. Then click the "Build" menu icon. On the right side, select the disk you want to apply the driver to. Wait for kext cache to rebuild. You might get a warning that the kext is not signed or something. You can ignore that. Reboot.

 

[Worn]

Run Multibeast and click on "Drivers". Select Disk and check the driver you need. Then click the "Build" menu icon. On the right side, select the disk you want to apply the driver to. Wait for kext cache to rebuild. You might get a warning that the kext is not signed or something. You can ignore that. Reboot.

That may make minimal changes but it does not change just the one driver. There are certain minimum things that MultiBeast does and I've no guarantee that one of them isn't changing something that is perfectly fine on my existing boot drive.

Nonetheless, last night I tried exactly this against a clone of my boot drive and the result was no change in the ejectability of the hot swap drives.

I even found the install package (inside MultiBeast) for the 3rd party eSATA installation and ran that against the cloned drive with no change in behavior.

I'm not so sure that running MultiBeast against an already MultiBeasted drive works to change anything.

The 3rd party eSATA driver works to make my hot swap drives ejectable when run as part of a MultiBeast configuration against a fresh OS X installation but did not affect the ejectability when run against a clone of my already altered boot drive.

 

[Adrian B]

Navigate to /System/Library/Extensions and remove 3rd Party SATA kext to the Trash. Install 3rd Party eSata using MultiBeast.

Use DCPIManager to rebuild cache - if you fail to do this then on reboot you will still have the original unwanted kext!

Boot using -f just to be sure. Test.

Adrian B

 

[brickpower]

That may make minimal changes but it does not change just the one driver. There are certain minimum things that MultiBeast does and I've no guarantee that one of them isn't changing something that is perfectly fine on my existing boot drive.

As long as you don't select any DSDT options or any other options, in fact, YES, all it does is install the one driver. BUT it is true that you may need to rebuild the cache for it to take effect.

Also, you may not have proper hotswap fuctionality if you didn't select it in the BIOS. On my motherboard it defaults to Disabled for removable and hotswap on all intel SATA ports. It may be a good idea to check your BIOS to make sure it is enabled.

 

[Worn]

Navigate to /System/Library/Extensions and remove 3rd Party SATA kext to the Trash. Install 3rd Party eSata using MultiBeast.

Use DCPIManager to rebuild cache - if you fail to do this then on reboot you will still have the original unwanted kext!
...

This worked to replace the kext but this results in its own problems. I wanted the drives in the hot swap cage ejectable and this was accomplished. The 3rd party eSATA kext makes ALL drives ejectable (except the boot drive), not just the ones with the hot-plug option enabled in BIOS.

And, once a volume has been unmounted and its drive removed from the hot swap cage, any new drive placed into that cage slot does not register and cannot be used.

So, while I achieved the kext replacement, it did not provide the desired effect; I still have to reboot to install different drives in the hot swap cage.

Apparently, there is no kext which is mindful of the hot-plug property in BIOS and permits actual hot swap ability. But that is a subject for another thread.

But my thanks to Adrian. I learned more about MultiBeast's behavior and about DCPIManager.