eSATA port on P55M-UD2 - Works, but as an internal drive.

[Evildemon989]

I have a my book studio 2 with esata, and it works great with the hackintosh. The only problem I have, is that the esata port is controlled by the same chip as the four internal sata ports(not the gsata controller). This makes it show up in OSX as an internal drive, and will only work if plugged in before boot. Does anyone have any suggestions for this? I have the F8 bios, and F8 dsdt, 10.6.3, the kext that turns the drives back to internal on 10.6.3(IOBLOCKstorageinjector.kext or something), 10.6.2 AppleHDA.kext, MacPro4,1 smbios.plist.

 

[humph]

Are you using that ACHIBlockStorage kext (to make icons not orange)?
If you pull it out, then OK your icons on drives will be orange, but possibly that'll enable you to achieve what you are seeking.

Seems each of the 6 SATA ports on the P55 can technically be set for eSata/HotPlug or internal, but this is via low-level register settings at boot.

Whilst I'm not 100% sure (coz I'm not a programmer! etc), I think this is an issue that only a modified BIOS would resolve, as the registers are "Write Once" (on each power up), it did not look like something that DSDT could help with. (P 615 Intel Series 5 Chipset spec).

If correct, just means Gigabyte were lazy (or worse) with their BIOS when they decided to allocate one of the P55 SATA ports for eSATA.

But perhaps a more experienced person would find a solution.

 

[Evildemon989]

Well, I removed the kext and now all of the drives are hot swappable again, although they do not have orange icons. They have all retained the internal disk icons. Including my eSATA drive. I would like to at least be able to switch the eSATA drive icon back. Is there anyway to do this?

 

[humph]

I'm not aware of a way to specify on a per-port basis in DSDT (so you can have the eSATA as orange and rest as nice internal silver color), although I suspect that there may be a way. If so, then it's one a true expert at DSDT (or kext hacking??) would be needed for!! Would be v nice if the BIOS allowed for this. P55 allows for cabled eSATA (ie: backplane cable to connector on PCB, so in theory you could set up multiple eSATA/Internal combinations.

I'd be very happy if my icons were not orange w/o the blockstorage kext...perhaps will try removing and see if the silver color remains! Sorry have no more ideas or experience on this one..

 

[tonymacx86]

Well- if the color is the only thing bothering you here's a simple fix:

1. Download the attached icon and unzip
2. Right click Internal Drive and choose Copy
3. Right click on the ugly Orange Icon
4. Choose Get Info
5. Highlight the icon in the upper left corner
6. Hit Command-V

Presto- pretty silvery drives.