Flaky ESATA on Gigabtye Z68MX-UD2H-B3

[Poopmonkey]

This is a great site and it really helped me pick and choose components for my new computer. Tons of great threads and a lot of helpful info. I have one little hiccup in build, which is my flaky Esata.


I just built a new computer with these specs:

Gigabyte Z68MX-UD2H-B3
Intel Core i7 2600K
XFX 6870 1GB Dual Fan
8GB DDR3 1600Mhz Kingston Ram


I'm dual booting this computer with one hard drive booting Windows 7 and the other booting Mac OS X 10.7.2.

Overall, the system is as solid as a rock. It has not ever crashed or panicked on me. Generally, almost everything works expect ESATA which is flaky.

Let me explain, I can boot up the computer and turn on my ESATA HDD dock and it sees my 1TB WD Caviar Green SATA hard drive. It mounts it and I can use it. Unfortunately, it seems after a while of using the drive it somehow freezes it or unmounts it and Lion spits at me a Error message saying the drive was improperly ejected.

I'd love to use ESATA since the speed of it is great and I have a dock that only supports USB 2.0 and ESATA. I have installed all the possible drivers on Multibeast to get it working so far.

Thanks in advance for anyone that would be willing to help me.

 

[Poopmonkey]

BUMP!

 

[Poopmonkey]

BUMP!

 

[adrianjgsmith]

I've had a lot of trouble with the onboard eSATA port with this motherboard, including the one you mention. It may be software, though I also have a suspicion the port was damaged when my flatmate dragged my system out place when I wasn't around.

Is it working alright in Windows 7? One thing you may want to try is going into System Preferences>Energy Saver and making sure 'put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible' is unchecked.

Personally, though, I've just about given up with the onboard eSATA port (USB 3.0 as well), and am looking at an alternative solution on the PCI Express slots.

 

[mrhooks]

I have the same mobo, and I have problems with the port as well. (Note: I have not installed any kexts or done any hacks.) At first, I thought it simply wasn't working at all. After reading some posts here, I decided to test if it was a hot-swap issue. Turns out the port works, but it isn't hot-swappable. However, having a drive connected and mounted through eSATA results in ~8-15% CPU usage per core, not to mention a lot of clicking noises and stuff.

Forget it. I'm sticking with FW800. It's slower, but I can hot-swap, and it doesn't use the CPU when it's doing nothing. I'll just chalk up the extra money I paid for this board as going toward the extra internal SATA port. Maybe I'll revisit trying to get eSATA to work properly when I'm done re-installing all of my apps and transferring my files and stuff.

 

[Poopmonkey]

Hey guys! Thanks for the replies! Sorry I didn't look at this topic anymore but I fixed my issues with ESATA by just buying a ESATA bracket for the computer in question. Basically it just converts a SATA connection coming from your motherboard to a ESATA connection. Works fine with the board and now I have two good ESATA ports on the back of my computer since I cannot use the single built in one. The best thing is that I don't have to fiddle around with any drivers or anything, it simply works!

 

[mrhooks]

Wish I could do the same, but I only have 1 internal SATA port left, and it's waiting for an SSD.

 

[elemental]

Thank you for the post on Sata to eSata connector. Decided to buy one on Amazon and hopefully that will fix everything. Stupid eSata just kept disconnecting and pissing me off. I would have to restart because of the Eject error.

Cheers to a possible fix!

 

[adrianjgsmith]

I've been meaning to throw my hat into the ring on my workaround, but wanted to wait until I knew it was stable. Unfortunately this still doesn't fix the onboard eSATA port.

1. I went with a Digitus PCIe to Expresscard adapter (not the first person on here to do that):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0017JKZW6

The nice thing is, like the SATA to eSATA bracket, it's just a port converter so needs no drivers. There are other manufacturers making these and I assume they work fine, too.

2. Then I plugged in my Startech eSATA expresscard adapter:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Startech-Expres ... 298&sr=1-2

3. Using the drivers from here:

http://www.lacie.com/us/support/drivers ... m?id=10127

All working. The reason I went with this is that I'm running short of PCIe slots, and so whenever I need Firewire/USB 3.0/anything that runs off an Expresscard port, I can easily swap the cards out. Also eSATA drives are hot swappable this way, which was a must for me.

Hope that helps someone out there...