Unable to safely remove eSATA disk

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter Meinl
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Peter Meinl

I have a eSATA disk connected to a VIA VT6421 Controller (Driver Date
8.11.2006).
Vista does not show the disk when I click on "Safely remove hardware".
Using Device Manager I tried to set the disk policy to "Optimize for quick
removal" but this option is disabled.
 
Peter Meinl said:
I have a eSATA disk connected to a VIA VT6421 Controller (Driver Date
8.11.2006).
Vista does not show the disk when I click on "Safely remove hardware".
Using Device Manager I tried to set the disk policy to "Optimize for
quick
removal" but this option is disabled.
Click to expand...


as far as I know esata is not treated as removable media and just shows as
another harddrive ( and thats the idea of esata )

I have a hard drive connected via esata and just turn the switch off ( on
the external enclosure )
 
According to this web page:

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=420&OSID=36&CatID=2920&SubCatID=117


There's a newer driver that specifically supports Vista (double-check
everything since this is just my best shot). I had a similar problem with
my eSATA drive in an Icy Dock external enclosure. Even though I didn't show
any problems in Device Manager, I wasn't getting a Safely Remove Hardware
prompt from Vista Ultimate. I had to Update the driver from Device Manager
using a new, Vista specific driver to get that capability. Also, make sure
the drive is set up as non-RAID in the BIOS and that you don't install the
RAID driver (again, I'm assuming this is a non-RAID setup -- I don't know
what VIA calls there's, but it should be something besides RAID (I think)).
 
I am already using the new driver mentioned.
Could it be that the controller has to support hot-swap, which maybe the VIA
controller does not?
 
Peter said:
I have a eSATA disk connected to a VIA VT6421 Controller (Driver Date
8.11.2006).
Vista does not show the disk when I click on "Safely remove hardware".
Using Device Manager I tried to set the disk policy to "Optimize for quick
removal" but this option is disabled.
Click to expand...

If a drive appears in the 'Savely remove hardware' list is
controlled by some bits in the device descriptor which the
driver provides.

The 'Savely remove hardware' facility reads the bits from
the registry, so they can be temporarely modified until next
restart. This is true at least for XP.
Have a look at this thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...p.hardware/browse_frm/thread/88af269e39119f5b

My commandline tool RemoveDrive should be able to do the removal
job:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/removedrive.zip

If the drive isn't detected on replug, then you can try a
devcon rescan
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311272


Greetings from Germany

Uwe
 
Peter Meinl said:
I have a eSATA disk connected to a VIA VT6421 Controller (Driver Date
8.11.2006).
Vista does not show the disk when I click on "Safely remove hardware".
Using Device Manager I tried to set the disk policy to "Optimize for quick
removal" but this option is disabled.
Click to expand...

Maybe?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925528
Release Date: January 30, 2007

This article discusses an update that resolves a variety of issues that occur with specific USB
hardware devices and controllers in Windows Vista.
 
It was a controller/driver problem:
After replacing the VIA PCI controller with a Delock PCI-Express controller
(20 Euro, JMicron JMB360 chipset) and installing the newest Vista driver
from JMicron the eSATA drive shows up in "Safely remove hardware" and the
disk policy is set to "optimize for performance".

With the standard MS Vista driver "safely remove" was not offerd.

There is still something strange:
"Enable wirte caching" and "Enable advanced performance" under "Disk
Policies" are selectable but device manager seems not to accept them to be
checked (does not remember them checked).
However: Vista Explorer reports 65-70 MB/Sec writing to a ST350083 disk,
which seems to be OK to me.
 
"Enable wirte caching" and "Enable advanced performance" under "Disk Policies" are selectable
but device manager seems not to accept them to be checked (does not remember them checked).
Click to expand...

I get the same on two of my external USB drives.

They seem to work fine.

-Michael
 
Peter said:
It was a controller/driver problem:
After replacing the VIA PCI controller with a Delock PCI-Express
controller (20 Euro, JMicron JMB360 chipset) and installing the newest
Vista driver from JMicron the eSATA drive shows up in "Safely remove
hardware" and the disk policy is set to "optimize for performance".

With the standard MS Vista driver "safely remove" was not offerd.

There is still something strange:
"Enable wirte caching" and "Enable advanced performance" under "Disk
Policies" are selectable but device manager seems not to accept them to
be checked (does not remember them checked).
However: Vista Explorer reports 65-70 MB/Sec writing to a ST350083 disk,
which seems to be OK to me.
Click to expand...


Where does Vista report HD read and write rates?
 
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