Greetings,
I hope that someone can offer me advice. I'm having a heck of a time getting this drive to work with eSATA since I upgraded to Windows 7 64-bit. Here are my relevant system specs:
WD1001FALS 1 TB drive in a Rosewill eSATA powered enclosure
Windows 7 64-bit
Gigabyte 965P-DQ6 motherboard with AHCI enabled and eSATA cables run to the case
I initially used this drive as a USB 2.0 connection and used it for several years without issue. I switched to AHCI mode back on Windows XP right before I upgraded. I seemed to have no problems hot-swapping the drive, disconnecting it and shutting it off and on while Windows was running. I'm well aware of the dangers of just shutting down a drive without "disconnecting" it first.
Initially after upgrading to Windows 7 the drive was not recognized so I began the driver hunt. (It blows my mind that this isn't easier to setup in Windows 7) I installed the motherboard SATA driver. The drive would work provided the drive was powered up as Windows loaded. Wanting full hot-swap functionality I kept hunting for other drivers. I found other people with similar issues and drivers they suggested. I thought I found one that did the trick (Windows would detect the drive as it was turned on, and allowed me to disconnect it), but as soon as I shut the drive off and tried to turn it back on trouble started. Windows would no longer recognize the drive. After a reboot, the system would hang detecting the SATA drives in the BIOS and could never identify the external. Listening to the actual drive, it would spin up and give a soft beep, spin up and give a soft beep, etc.
WD graciously allowed me to RMA the drive since it was still under warranty. I received the replacement last week and plugged it into my enclosure. Windows recognized it wonderfully so I formatted it and started copying data over. I downloaded the Hotswap! utility just to be safe that it could give me the go ahead to disconnect the drive. I did that, got it's blessing and then powered down the drive. That's all she wrote, it never booted again. Same spin up and beep as the first drive. I've tried installing both drives internally and get the same symptoms.
So, I'm assuming something on my system is killing these drives? I've heard of bad drivers and powering off causing data loss, or even the corruption of the drive, but can it honestly kill the drive outright? This drive also appears to be under warranty but I dare not RMA it before I figure out the issue, and I don't want to keep killing their drives!
Does anyone have any guesses as to what's going on?
Could this be an issue with firmware?
Is there a good way to remove all the SATA drivers from Windows 7 so I can start fresh?
And what does the spin up and beep actually mean?
Thank you to anyone who can offer suggestions!
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