Best/Safest Way to Remove eSata drive?

[uchiha_itachi]

So I have a sata drive connected to my pc via eSata in an external enclosure. I use this drive as a backup drive and was wondering what the best way is to remove the drive when I have finished backing up. There doesnt seem to be the usual removable drive option that is present for usb memory stick or external drives.

I dont want to risk damaging the external sata drive, and I cant find anything on the net describing the best way to connect/disconnect the drive while under windows.

Any suggestions?

[vrykyl]

hmmm, it should show up in the windows 'safely remove hardware' list.... which could mean the esata/sata controller on your mobo isnt correctly detecting it.... might be worth checking the bios settings for the controller...... failing that Id just disconnect it after youve shutdown the pc.

[peterb]

SATA is hot pluggable - so you shouldn't cause any physical damage by just unplugging it. However (obviously) if you do that while data is being transferred - you will lose data. I haven't used Esata in a Windows machine, but generally you should unmount the disk before disconnecting it so that any delayed writes are completed and any open files closed. Normally this is done (in windows) throgh the remove hardware - however I think that is only for drives that Windows recognises as removeable storage - and to all intents and purposes, there is no way Windows can tell if a SATA drive is internal or external so there will be no "eject" option if you right click on the drive in Windows explorer.

You may be able to unmount the drive in the administration control panel, or designate it as a removeable device - but I can't test that at the moment (I'm not at a machine where I have administration rights).

So the safest way - unless you find a way of unmounting the disk while the system is up, is to shut down the system, which will flush any disk cache, and then disconnect.

The reverse - hot plugging - shouldn't be an issue, and can be done with the system running.

[vrykyl]

peterb - my esata hdd shows up in the safely remove hardware dialogue....

but yes that would seem like a sensible set of solutions write back caching could also be disabled for safety?

[Andydigital]

I have 5 drives in my PC, 4 are SATA and 1 is E-SATA. The 4 SATA show up in the remove hardware dialogue but the External E-SATA doesn't, its also got its own dedicated E-SATA socket on the motherboard at the rear. This leads me to believe that E-SATA drives are not supposed to show up in the remove hardware list.

[vrykyl]

ok, but the standard sata hard drives arent meant to show up in the windows remove hardware list....unless theyre mounted in esata or usb/firefire external boxes that is....

[Andydigital]

Well they all show up except the E-SATA on my ASUS A8N32SLI Deluxe, and it really bugs me actually.

[vrykyl]

Ahhhh, did you install the nvidia nforce ide driver during the install of your motherboard chipset drivers? If so, the simple fix is to uninstall your nforce drivers and reinstall them - unchecking the IDE driver.... cant remember what the exact wording is, but its clear which bit is what - let windows use its own ide drivers - the nvidia ones are rubbish!

[Andydigital]

Ok i'll give that a try later.

Edit: Thanks mate thats sorted it out. The E-sata still doesn't show in the remove hardware dialogue though, actually there isn't one now i've removed the Naff Nvidia IDE driver.

[[GSV]Myocardial]

Ahhhh, did you install the nvidia nforce ide driver during the install of your motherboard chipset drivers? If so, the simple fix is to uninstall your nforce drivers and reinstall them - unchecking the IDE driver.... cant remember what the exact wording is, but its clear which bit is what - let windows use its own ide drivers - the nvidia ones are rubbish!

Think you've just solved one of my real bug bears with current system setup

[Andydigital]

How do you use the "Thanks" function on the forum, i cant see any "thank you" button or anything? Using firefox by the way.

[vrykyl]

lol, the nvidia nforce ide driver and nv firewall are two of the biggest causes of problems i have to deal with in older pcs (viruses/spyware/end user stupidity excluded) - had one couple a while back that kept using the safelly remove hardware list to stop try and stop their OS harddrive, because it was showing in the list and they didnt know what it was.....

*edit* - should be 4 grey buttons at the end of each post......

[this_is_gav]

Next best when there's no 'remove safely' option is going into Device Manager, going to Disk drives, right-clicking on the drive in question and selecting Uninstall.

[Andydigital]

*edit* - should be 4 grey buttons at the end of each post......

Hmmm only seeing 3 buttons here, on firefox and explorer 6

[peterb]

For some strange reason, you need a minimum number of posts before it appears!

[Andydigital]

Oh right i had a feeling it may have something to do with that. Cheers.