is eSATA supposed to be plug n' play?

[Hack&Lube]

I just put my old harddrive into an external to use as a backup drive. Normally with externals I'll leave them off most of the time so they don't heat up and only turn them on when I need to use them. That works great with USB but this drive is connected via eSATA.

The drive won't be seen by Windows XP and won't appear in MY COMPUTER unless the drive was powered on when the computer POSTs. It works fine that way but if I just turn it on or plug it in whenever, it won't be seen, I can't unplug the drive either or it'll disappear and won't reappear when I plug the eSATA cable back in unless I restart the computer.


Isn't eSATA supposed to be plug n' play? Was I misinformed or is there something wrong with my computer or something I can do to make it plug n' play?

[Bobblehead]

It is supposed to be.

I have read about issues like you are describing with nVidia's SATA drivers. Are you using an nVidia mobo?

[CubicleGeek]

Is the controller set to AHCI mode? I think that is required in order to support eSATA hot swap.