eSATA drive prevents music server booting from internal drive

[stuarth]

I've built myself a mini-ITX server running Windows XP using the same mainboard as the C.A.P.S. described elsewhere on CA.

 

I'm using 'barebones' kit with the case, described here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article987-page1.html (very small case, no expansion options)

 

The 60 GB SSD drive is full of FLAC files and I need more storage. NAS is not an option for me right now.

 

First I tried a USB-connected external drive for music files but this caused playback problems (clicks and pops) via my USB connected DAC.

 

I was advised to try an e-SATA drive. I bought a Vantec enclosure which supports eSATA and fitted it with a terabyte 3.5" drive (Western Digital Green 5400-7200 RPM).

 

I purchased a cable with SATA connector at one end and eSATA at the other, and routed this out the back of the case. I connected the drive, powered it on, booted the PC - all good, Windows recognised the new drive. I formatted the new drive, copied a file across from the internal SSD and checked that it played fine - no random noises reaching the DAC this time. Powered it all down at end of day.

 

Next day not so good. The PC refused to boot with the drive connected - BIOS said 'no bootable device'. When I disconnected or powered off the eSATA drive and tried again, the server booted from SSD, no problems. On both my PC's, if I connect eSATA after booting the PC, the external drive is not recognised - this is pretty standard (not like USB).

 

The external drive would connect fine to my main big 'ripping' PC, and allowed this PC to boot (using the cable supplied with the drive). I borrowed this 'known good' cable and connected to the small music server. This time it booted OK and I could play files from D drive again. I assumed the first cable was in some way faulty.

 

Today I powered on first the eSATA drive then the server and the same problem occurred. Aargh. Again, no bootable deice.

 

Any ideas? Googling using the terms Intel D945GSEJT and eSATA has yet to enlighten me.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi stuarth - This is an easy one. Go into the BIOS and set the boot order to correctly look at your SSD before the eSATA drive.

 

[stuarth]

Chris,

 

thanks for your reply and for all the useful info I've picked up from this forum over the last year or so.

 

Unfortunately it's not that easy. The SSD boot drive is the primary (and only) bootable device, as I have disabled the network interface for now and I have no CD drive.

 

Alas when the eSATA drive is connected and the PC refuses to boot, when I return to the 'Boot Devices' menu in BIOS it is a total blank, no devices present!

 

The weird thing is I have had the drive working, twice, on two different cables. Powering off at end of day seems to 'break' something, but the drive is actually fine.

 

Considering my options, I've decided to keep it simple, stress levels down, and accept a possible small drop in audio quality - for now.

 

1. Retire the eSATA drive to become the new backup drive for my Ripping PC, replacing a USB ext drive.

 

2. Purchase a 500 GB 'Hybrid' 2.5" internal drive for the server which has both 4G of solid state memory plus a spinning disc. This will replace the SSD to host both my O/S and music files. No room in the case for 2 drives (but won't sound as good as SSD)?

 

3. Load Windows 7 professional on the new drive (replacing XP), which will let me connect easily via LAN to my win7 ripping PC, to load files ocassionally - I will need to carry server to another room to plug into the router.

 

4. Put the SSD into my ripping PC, just so it's not wasted. It will boot quicker if nothing else! I will reload win 7 onto the SSD (with my program files)and get rid of some year-old junk. The existing 750GB drive will then become data only.

 

When we move house and I can get a wired LAN in my music room, then I may look at the server options again.

 

Anyway, that's today's plan!

Stuart

 

 

 

[Gregor Samsa]

I'm not sure why Chris' suggestion hasn't worked for you, but I can tell you how to get your computer to recognize your eSata device if you turn it on after you start your computer.

 

Go to the Control Panel and get into the Device Manager. Click once on the field - as opposed to the top rows. Clicking on the word "Computer" in the list of devices should be fine. When you do this, a small icon should appear on the bottom row of the top bar - right under the word "help". If you mouse over it, it should say "Scan for hardware changes". Actually, in XP it may be something more like "plug and play devices" - sorry, it's been a while. Under most circumstances, your drive will initialize if you click on this.

 

Good luck.

 

[stuarth]

Gregor, that's a good suggestion and I'll give it a try.

 

thanks - Stuart

 

[cfelliot]

With both drives plugged in, check the D945 BIOS boot order to be sure it is set to the drive you'd expect!

 

[stuarth]

Still no joy, alas.

 

Yes, boot order is set correctly. The OCZ Vertex SSD is the primary boot device.

 

When I power the eSATA drive on after the PC boots and choose 'scan for new hardware' from Device Mgr, the search continues indefinitely and the external drive is not found.

 

It's likely that a more recent mainboard with a newer BIOS would fix the problem. I've seen references on the web to 'enabling AHCI' in BIOS to allow eSATA hot swapping, but this is not an menu option for me.

 

thanks anyway for the suggestions!

Stuart

 

[cfelliot]

Are you running the most current BIOS for the board?

 

Check: www.intel.com

 

 

[Audio_ELF]

Have you tried swapping the SATA connections on the motherboad around?

 

Eloise

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Your search for new equipment should end fairly soon if the drive isn't detected. It shouldn't continue indefinitely. If your Vantec is like mine, it should give you the option of USB as well as eSATA. I would try it, despite the slowness. It has usually been easier to make connections using USB. Right now I have a WHS sever box headed back to Acer for repair because it worked fine - except that the eSATA port didn't work. This leads to my final thought, which is that you have damaged hardware, OS or bios. One or more may need to be replaced. Do try the USB first though. Try to deal with the clicks and pops through your playback software. You didn't say what you use. I had tremendous problems with this until I used ASIO4all in Foobar & JRiver. You might be able to fix it with just the latency setting. Win7 handles audio much better.

 

[PeterSt]

(e)SATA doesn't require "scan for hardware changes", nor will it (normally) be able to hot plug. IOW, the drive should be connected at power on of the PC, or otherwise you will never be able to use it (this is not 100% strict, and depending on the BIOS and OS it *can* be hot pluggable, but just forget this for now. Also, you already knew this :-).

 

Also notice that at swapping SATA devices (and eSATA is just that), the BIOS will mess up the boot order. To my findings this is fairly standard over BIOSes/Mobos. Hence ...

It is this what your attention should go to IMO.

 

What I would do is connect the enclosure to an internal SATA cable, and see whether it ends up the same. Assuming (!) that the external enclosure adds nothing (electronics), the result should be the same. But if it is not, it must be something about the eSATA connection. Which brings me to ...

 

Normally any eSATA connection goes along with an internal SATA connection; it should be close to the external connection on the mobo. Now, what if your SSD is plugged into that connection eh ? then it for sure would not work ... (both the internal and the external connections will really be the same one).

 

If the result is the same (see above), I would try to reformat the external drive somehow. Yea, I know, how ??

So, I think it can be so that the format somehow failed, and that the boot chokes on it. Now, keep in mind the BIOS swapping SATA drives anyway for boot order, and there you can have your missing boot device, just because all chokes half in the process.

 

Lastly, do note that also with SATA there's a master/slave thing. Not that I really understood it (I do for PATA/IDE), but it *is* there. So, imagine something like the eSATA being master and the SSD being slave, the master not enabling a boot (because it's just not bootable) and now things choke on *that*.

 

Hope this helps you somehow,

Peter

 

[Gregor Samsa]

"(e)SATA doesn't require "scan for hardware changes", nor will it (normally) be able to hot plug. IOW, the drive should be connected at power on of the PC, or otherwise you will never be able to use it..."

 

This is quite simply not true. A brief perusal of this page:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100008040+600006281&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&IsNodeId=1&Subcategory=92&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

 

reveals that all these eSATA devices are hot-swap. In practice, I usually have to go through the procedure I describe if I turn on drives after I have booted. This works 9.5 times out of 10.

 

 

 

[stuarth]

Thanks for the replies once more.

 

@Chuck: I cannot locate an updated BIOS on the Intel site, but that's a good idea. I recently did a BIOS update on my other PC to fix a weird mouse pointer problem in windows 7.

 

@Eloise: Thanks, I will try swapping SATA ports around, when I next open up the case.

 

@Gregor: Yes my Vantec enclosure supports USB also, but 'clicks and pops' during playback on a previous drive indicated that the USB bus used for playback was overloaded with traffic.

 

Empirical Audio advise on their site: 'If you are using USB for audio streaming, do not attach ANY other USB devices to the computer, even a mouse and particularly not USB discs.'

 

I'm using Foobar without ASIO etc as my original DAC (1st gen HRT Streamer) doesn't support this. I have set XP to bypass Windows mixer as best I can.

 

I now have a new SPDIF converter and DAC so I'm looking at Foobar playback settings once more (buffer length etc), as I'm dealing with some 'dropouts' which I haven't had before. That's another topic though . . .

 

@Peter: I have tried two cables. The first one was a 'special' that went directly from the SATA port to the drive in one piece (I had to modify case to allow this).

 

The second cable was supplied with the drive and is two-piece: SATA to backplate mount socket, then e-SATA to e-SATA.

 

Both cables worked once and once only in this PC, which could mean something has been damaged as you suggest. I have tried to be careful with static, but I don't like the way the cable had to make a sharp 90 degree bend to fit inside the tiny case.

 

I now have the supplied 2-piece cable back in my 'main' desktop PC, where e-SATA works just fine. So the cable and drive are both good.

 

I find the external drive somewhat clumsy: another metal box, with cables, power lead, power supply etc. The rack that once held all my gear comfortably now seems too small. But I do appreciate why keeping the spinning disc away from the CPU etc is a good idea. If only I could afford a huge SSD!

 

[PeterSt]

This is quite simply not true. A brief perusal of this page:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100008040+60...

 

reveals that all these eSATA devices are hot-swap. In practice, I usually have to go through the procedure I describe if I turn on drives after I have booted. This works 9.5 times out of 10.

 

Yeah, sure. You quite simply know better. Have a good sleep on it, ok ?

 

 

[cfelliot]

SEE: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=19045&ProdId=3060&lang=eng

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Yeah, I don't know anything. I'm not a "Lead Developer" of "XX high end". I do however, know the meaning of the term "hot swap", which appears to have escaped you.

 

The concept of "civility" also appears to be elusive for you.

 

I think you need more than sleep.

 

[PeterSt]

Gregor, Sir,

 

Just read my post about it again, and see that there's more than you seem to know about this. So, shut of AHCI in your system, and try whether it's still working, ok ?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host_Controller_Interface

 

I certainly don't want to encourage people to switch this On because there are sufficiently enough problems with it.

 

Peter

 

[stuarth]

Chuck,

 

thank you for finding that link for me, I didn't look hard enough.

 

I downloaded and applied the flash-ROM update (always a few nervous moments)! - which took me from v 0025 to 0045. The release notes did mention some changes to SATA.

 

Funnily enough the F2 key to enter BIOS config no longer worked for my wireless keyboard. I had to borrow a wired one just for that step.

 

Now there are new menu options in BIOS, one which lets me change the SATA mode from IDE to AHCI.

 

I'm not doing that yet, as on Win XP I'll need to load new drivers for AHCI from the install disc. My little server has no CD drive; I had to load the O/S in the first place by hooking up to a 'borrowed' CD drive which was installed in another PC - a messy business.

 

So, some progress here perhaps. I'll know on the weekend when I have more time to play.

 

[stuarth]

Peter,

 

thanks for the wikipedia link. Seems that I must load drivers to enable AHCI under XP.

 

>>AHCI is fully supported out of the box for Windows Vista and Linux operating systems from kernel 2.6.19, as well as later operating systems such as Windows 7.

 

this next bit signals caution:

 

>>issues caused when the mode is switched once an operating system has already been installed.

 

--Stuart

 

[PeterSt]

Hi Stuart,

 

Although there will be much much more to find on this, here's the "discussion page" from that WikiPedia link :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Advanced_Host_Controller_Interface

 

The biggest problem that I know of is that you install the OS with AHCI On, next have problems at booting, and next are completely unable to undo AHCI. Getting a new physical OS disk being the solution.

 

But there is more under the hood like bad SATA performance, ticks during audio because of that, and things of which you'll never guess AHCI is the origine.

 

If it works, it works I guess, and hot pluggable SATA *really* is a pro. But if it doesn't work for your system, beware of all the side-problems springing from it - including not being able to boot anymore, ever.

 

Seems that I must load drivers to enable AHCI under XP.

 

Yes, that's why I said "depening on the OS" (and did not relate this specifically to your problem -> you wouldn't have AHCI running). Here too, be careful again, but even more.

 

Btw Stuart, if all fails, think about north bridge and south bridge SATA drivers. I must say that I don't know much about it, but I think that south bridge always is okay, but north bridge very much depends on the chip and drivers. The mobo connectors will be grouped near the chip, but let's say there may be two groups if both are utilized on your mother board. Now, try to move your connections from one group to the other. Or spread them over the two.

 

Good luck,

Peter