Hi. So I've heard E-SATA is hot pluggable but its not working on my
setup. I have a fairly popular ASUS motherboard (ASUS P5-B Deluxe).
I have an External SATA HDD connected right now through the E-SATA
connector on the back of the mobo with a 500GB Western Digital SATA.
The device works fine and gives good performance but Windows Vista shows
no options for disconnecting the drive through that "Safely Remove
Hardware" tray icon. From all appearances, I might as well have plugged
this thing into an internal SATA connector!
Incidentally, my USB connected drives all connect/disconnect (usually).
That is one of the reasons why I want to switch to E-SATA. Not only
for better efficiency but USB has been proving to be unreliable at times
where it fails to recognize the USB drive forcing me to repeatedly
physically disconnect and reconnect the drive's USB cable until it
finally works. Grrr. Anybody else get this at times?
I've gone through all the BIOS options I know but haven't come across
anything I recognize that allows/disallows E-SATA hot plugability. Can
anyone point me in the right direction as to how to get this thing to
work? Is this a BIOS setting, OS setting or both?
Relevant System specs:
ASUS P5B-Deluxe mobo (Intel P965 chipset) (BIOS version 1004)
Intel Core 2 Duo E-6400
4096 MB DDR2-800 RAM
Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition
Previously BDD <bdd@nospam.net.com> wrote:
> Hi. So I've heard E-SATA is hot pluggable but its not working on my
> setup. I have a fairly popular ASUS motherboard (ASUS P5-B Deluxe).
> I have an External SATA HDD connected right now through the E-SATA
> connector on the back of the mobo with a 500GB Western Digital SATA.
> The device works fine and gives good performance but Windows Vista shows
> no options for disconnecting the drive through that "Safely Remove
> Hardware" tray icon. From all appearances, I might as well have plugged
> this thing into an internal SATA connector!
> Incidentally, my USB connected drives all connect/disconnect (usually).
> That is one of the reasons why I want to switch to E-SATA. Not only
> for better efficiency but USB has been proving to be unreliable at times
> where it fails to recognize the USB drive forcing me to repeatedly
> physically disconnect and reconnect the drive's USB cable until it
> finally works. Grrr. Anybody else get this at times?
Not with working hardware. I suspect you have some issue there.
Might be a chipset going bad or really bad external enclisures.
> I've gone through all the BIOS options I know but haven't come across
> anything I recognize that allows/disallows E-SATA hot plugability. Can
> anyone point me in the right direction as to how to get this thing to
> work? Is this a BIOS setting, OS setting or both?
> Relevant System specs:
> ASUS P5B-Deluxe mobo (Intel P965 chipset) (BIOS version 1004)
> Intel Core 2 Duo E-6400
> 4096 MB DDR2-800 RAM
> Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition
For SATA hotplug you need a) chipset (controller) support and
b) OS support. I have it working with an nVidia CK804
chipset under both Linux and Windows. However some research
done when looking into why it would not work with an other
computer revealed that many chipsets do not support SATA
hotplug. I really don't know what SAATA controller your
Mainboard uses, bit only some Intel controllers do have
hotplug support. Best first find out what SATA controller
you have and post it here. One thing you can also
try is to actually hot-plug, i.e. boot computer into the OS
then connect the drive. If the OS detects it, the hardware
likely has hotplug support.
The second issue is that the OS has to find out this drive
is supposed to be hot-plugged. Of course there is no way
in software to differentiate between an internal SATA drive
and a drive connected via eSATA. So you have to find out
how to tell Vista that this drive is hotpluggable in
any case. Unless hotplugging it once fixes that? If not,
there should be a possibility to set drive properties to
"this drive is removable" or something like it.
Thanks for the info. Yeah, I would not be surprised if the cheap
enclosures I bought have bad USB implementations. Another complication
is the possibility of bad USB hubs.
The ASUS P5B-Deluxe uses an extra JMicron chip to do the E-SATA and IDE.
Specifically, it is the "JMicron® JMB363 PATA and SATA controller" as
specified on this page:
ASUS calls their E-SATA "SATA on-the-go". I'm thinking that might not
be fully E-SATA compliant. There is a small discussion about this
"on-the-go" thing on this page:
Arno Wagner wrote:
> Previously BDD <bdd@nospam.net.com> wrote:
>> Hi. So I've heard E-SATA is hot pluggable but its not working on my
>> setup. I have a fairly popular ASUS motherboard (ASUS P5-B Deluxe).
>
>> I have an External SATA HDD connected right now through the E-SATA
>> connector on the back of the mobo with a 500GB Western Digital SATA.
>> The device works fine and gives good performance but Windows Vista shows
>> no options for disconnecting the drive through that "Safely Remove
>> Hardware" tray icon. From all appearances, I might as well have plugged
>> this thing into an internal SATA connector!
>
>> Incidentally, my USB connected drives all connect/disconnect (usually).
>> That is one of the reasons why I want to switch to E-SATA. Not only
>> for better efficiency but USB has been proving to be unreliable at times
>> where it fails to recognize the USB drive forcing me to repeatedly
>> physically disconnect and reconnect the drive's USB cable until it
>> finally works. Grrr. Anybody else get this at times?
>
> Not with working hardware. I suspect you have some issue there.
> Might be a chipset going bad or really bad external enclisures.
>
>> I've gone through all the BIOS options I know but haven't come across
>> anything I recognize that allows/disallows E-SATA hot plugability. Can
>> anyone point me in the right direction as to how to get this thing to
>> work? Is this a BIOS setting, OS setting or both?
>
>> Relevant System specs:
>
>> ASUS P5B-Deluxe mobo (Intel P965 chipset) (BIOS version 1004)
>> Intel Core 2 Duo E-6400
>> 4096 MB DDR2-800 RAM
>> Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition
>
> For SATA hotplug you need a) chipset (controller) support and
> b) OS support. I have it working with an nVidia CK804
> chipset under both Linux and Windows. However some research
> done when looking into why it would not work with an other
> computer revealed that many chipsets do not support SATA
> hotplug. I really don't know what SAATA controller your
> Mainboard uses, bit only some Intel controllers do have
> hotplug support. Best first find out what SATA controller
> you have and post it here. One thing you can also
> try is to actually hot-plug, i.e. boot computer into the OS
> then connect the drive. If the OS detects it, the hardware
> likely has hotplug support.
>
> The second issue is that the OS has to find out this drive
> is supposed to be hot-plugged. Of course there is no way
> in software to differentiate between an internal SATA drive
> and a drive connected via eSATA. So you have to find out
> how to tell Vista that this drive is hotpluggable in
> any case. Unless hotplugging it once fixes that? If not,
> there should be a possibility to set drive properties to
> "this drive is removable" or something like it.
>
> Arno
For a device to show in "Safely remove" list, its driver (or its controller
driver) should mark it as "Removeable". My guess is that an existing driver
for your on-board SATA controller doesn't know that those ports are for an
external device, so it doesn't mark them as such. The driver should also be
able to detect hot plug. I guess the generic one is not.
Regarding USB, it's very sensitive to the PCB layout from the controller to
the connectors. I also have an ASUS board and its USB ports are all very
unreliable. One port will only recognize high-speed devices as USB 1.1. Even
though they all are connected to the same controller.
"BDD" <bdd@nospam.net.com> wrote in message
news:hTu%h.23395$Bk.14837@fe74.usenetserver.com...
> Hi. So I've heard E-SATA is hot pluggable but its not working on my
> setup. I have a fairly popular ASUS motherboard (ASUS P5-B Deluxe).
>
> I have an External SATA HDD connected right now through the E-SATA
> connector on the back of the mobo with a 500GB Western Digital SATA. The
> device works fine and gives good performance but Windows Vista shows no
> options for disconnecting the drive through that "Safely Remove Hardware"
> tray icon. From all appearances, I might as well have plugged this thing
> into an internal SATA connector!
>
> Incidentally, my USB connected drives all connect/disconnect (usually).
> That is one of the reasons why I want to switch to E-SATA. Not only for
> better efficiency but USB has been proving to be unreliable at times where
> it fails to recognize the USB drive forcing me to repeatedly physically
> disconnect and reconnect the drive's USB cable until it finally works.
> Grrr. Anybody else get this at times?
>
> I've gone through all the BIOS options I know but haven't come across
> anything I recognize that allows/disallows E-SATA hot plugability. Can
> anyone point me in the right direction as to how to get this thing to
> work? Is this a BIOS setting, OS setting or both?
>
> Relevant System specs:
>
> ASUS P5B-Deluxe mobo (Intel P965 chipset) (BIOS version 1004)
> Intel Core 2 Duo E-6400
> 4096 MB DDR2-800 RAM
> Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition
>
>
>
> TIA!
>
Previously BDD <bdd@nospam.net.com> wrote:
> Thanks for the info. Yeah, I would not be surprised if the cheap
> enclosures I bought have bad USB implementations. Another complication
> is the possibility of bad USB hubs.
> The ASUS P5B-Deluxe uses an extra JMicron chip to do the E-SATA and IDE.
> Specifically, it is the "JMicron® JMB363 PATA and SATA controller" as
> specified on this page:
> ASUS calls their E-SATA "SATA on-the-go". I'm thinking that might not
> be fully E-SATA compliant. There is a small discussion about this
> "on-the-go" thing on this page:
"BDD" <bdd@nospam.net.com> wrote in message
news:hTu%h.23395$Bk.14837@fe74.usenetserver.com...
> Hi. So I've heard E-SATA is hot pluggable but its not working on my
> setup. I have a fairly popular ASUS motherboard (ASUS P5-B Deluxe).
>
> I have an External SATA HDD connected right now through the E-SATA
> connector on the back of the mobo with a 500GB Western Digital SATA. The
> device works fine and gives good performance but Windows Vista shows no
> options for disconnecting the drive through that "Safely Remove Hardware"
> tray icon. From all appearances, I might as well have plugged this thing
> into an internal SATA connector!
>
> Incidentally, my USB connected drives all connect/disconnect (usually).
> That is one of the reasons why I want to switch to E-SATA. Not only for
> better efficiency but USB has been proving to be unreliable at times where
> it fails to recognize the USB drive forcing me to repeatedly physically
> disconnect and reconnect the drive's USB cable until it finally works.
> Grrr. Anybody else get this at times?
>
> I've gone through all the BIOS options I know but haven't come across
> anything I recognize that allows/disallows E-SATA hot plugability. Can
> anyone point me in the right direction as to how to get this thing to
> work? Is this a BIOS setting, OS setting or both?
>
> Relevant System specs:
>
> ASUS P5B-Deluxe mobo (Intel P965 chipset) (BIOS version 1004)
> Intel Core 2 Duo E-6400
> 4096 MB DDR2-800 RAM
> Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition
BDD:
Your WD SATA HDD with a SATA-II interface (3.0 Gb/s) has "hot-pluggable"
(a/k/a "hot-swappable") capability. Ditto your ASUS board with the eSATA
port.
Ordinarily with connected "hot-pluggable" SATA HDDs connected the system
will not display the "Safely Remove Icon" in the Notification Area (the
systray). It's simply not needed in the case of a SATA-II device supported
by the motherboard as it is in your system.
Now with *some* motherboards with some NVIDIA chipsets (and possibly other
chipsets) the SRI *will* appear in the Notification Area. When it does it's
entirely superfluous and need not be activated-accessed in any way with
respect to a SATA-II "hot-pluggable" HDD.
In any event you can connect & disconnect your WD SATA HDD in the identical
fashion as you would, for example, using a USB external HDD. (I'm assuming
of course that the SATA HDD is employed as a secondary HDD in the system).
There is, however, one somewhat annoying feature which I'm nearly (not
absolutely) sure applies to your ASUS motherboard. If you connect your SATA
HDD *after* the system boots, the system will not detect that drive. You
will need to access Device Manager, right-click on "Disk drives" and select
"Scan for hardware changes" from the submenu. The drive will then be
recognized and listed - and more importantly, usable.
Anna
> "BDD" <bdd@nospam.net.com> wrote in message
> news:hTu%h.23395$Bk.14837@fe74.usenetserver.com...
>> Hi. So I've heard E-SATA is hot pluggable but its not working on my
>> setup. I have a fairly popular ASUS motherboard (ASUS P5-B Deluxe).
>>
>> I have an External SATA HDD connected right now through the E-SATA
>> connector on the back of the mobo with a 500GB Western Digital SATA. The
>> device works fine and gives good performance but Windows Vista shows no
>> options for disconnecting the drive through that "Safely Remove Hardware"
>> tray icon. From all appearances, I might as well have plugged this thing
>> into an internal SATA connector!
>>
>> Incidentally, my USB connected drives all connect/disconnect (usually).
>> That is one of the reasons why I want to switch to E-SATA. Not only for
>> better efficiency but USB has been proving to be unreliable at times where
>> it fails to recognize the USB drive forcing me to repeatedly physically
>> disconnect and reconnect the drive's USB cable until it finally works.
>> Grrr. Anybody else get this at times?
>>
>> I've gone through all the BIOS options I know but haven't come across
>> anything I recognize that allows/disallows E-SATA hot plugability. Can
>> anyone point me in the right direction as to how to get this thing to
>> work? Is this a BIOS setting, OS setting or both?
>>
>> Relevant System specs:
>>
>> ASUS P5B-Deluxe mobo (Intel P965 chipset) (BIOS version 1004)
>> Intel Core 2 Duo E-6400
>> 4096 MB DDR2-800 RAM
>> Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition
> BDD:
> Your WD SATA HDD with a SATA-II interface (3.0 Gb/s) has "hot-pluggable"
> (a/k/a "hot-swappable") capability. Ditto your ASUS board with the eSATA
> port.
> Ordinarily with connected "hot-pluggable" SATA HDDs connected the system
> will not display the "Safely Remove Icon" in the Notification Area (the
> systray). It's simply not needed in the case of a SATA-II device supported
> by the motherboard as it is in your system.
That is patently untrue! If you unplug a device unsafely, the write
buffer may not have been commited to it and data loss and disk
corruption is quite possible!
The real reason is that there is no way to tell insoftware whether an
SATA device is external and hence Microsoft may them all as
internal by default. My XP installation classifies them all
as removable, even my internal disk, which is the sensible thing to do.
> Now with *some* motherboards with some NVIDIA chipsets (and possibly other
> chipsets) the SRI *will* appear in the Notification Area. When it does it's
> entirely superfluous and need not be activated-accessed in any way with
> respect to a SATA-II "hot-pluggable" HDD.
Absolutely not. You have to remove the disk safely (giving the OS the
time to flush its buffers) for a safe unplug.
> In any event you can connect & disconnect your WD SATA HDD in the identical
> fashion as you would, for example, using a USB external HDD. (I'm assuming
> of course that the SATA HDD is employed as a secondary HDD in the system).
That is true and you absolutely have to "safely remove" and USB HDD
before unplugging it, since otherwise you can get the cited data-loss
and filesystem corruption.
Usually no data will be bufferd for devices recognized as removable,
hence buffers are allways written through. This may still take time,
depending on the amount of data to be written. If you unplug during
these writes, you will loose data. However if you allways wait until
the data has been written, you do not loose data on an unannounced
(to the OS) unplug. If that is what you are doing, you likely have
been lucky so far.
And don't cite me SATA as hot-pluggable. While true, it concerns the
electrical connection and not the data-buffering by the OS!
For devices not recognized as removable, disk buffering is more
extensive and data can stay in the buffers (an not yet on disk)
longer. The traditional upper limit before a forced flush to disk
is 5 minutes. I don't know what Microsoft uses.
Anna wrote:
> "BDD" <bdd@nospam.net.com> wrote in message
> news:hTu%h.23395$Bk.14837@fe74.usenetserver.com...
>> Hi. So I've heard E-SATA is hot pluggable but its not working on my
>> setup. I have a fairly popular ASUS motherboard (ASUS P5-B Deluxe).
>>
>> I have an External SATA HDD connected right now through the E-SATA
>> connector on the back of the mobo with a 500GB Western Digital SATA. The
>> device works fine and gives good performance but Windows Vista shows no
>> options for disconnecting the drive through that "Safely Remove Hardware"
>> tray icon. From all appearances, I might as well have plugged this thing
>> into an internal SATA connector!
>>
>> Incidentally, my USB connected drives all connect/disconnect (usually).
>> That is one of the reasons why I want to switch to E-SATA. Not only for
>> better efficiency but USB has been proving to be unreliable at times where
>> it fails to recognize the USB drive forcing me to repeatedly physically
>> disconnect and reconnect the drive's USB cable until it finally works.
>> Grrr. Anybody else get this at times?
>>
>> I've gone through all the BIOS options I know but haven't come across
>> anything I recognize that allows/disallows E-SATA hot plugability. Can
>> anyone point me in the right direction as to how to get this thing to
>> work? Is this a BIOS setting, OS setting or both?
>>
>> Relevant System specs:
>>
>> ASUS P5B-Deluxe mobo (Intel P965 chipset) (BIOS version 1004)
>> Intel Core 2 Duo E-6400
>> 4096 MB DDR2-800 RAM
>> Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition
>
>
> BDD:
> Your WD SATA HDD with a SATA-II interface (3.0 Gb/s) has "hot-pluggable"
> (a/k/a "hot-swappable") capability. Ditto your ASUS board with the eSATA
> port.
>
> Ordinarily with connected "hot-pluggable" SATA HDDs connected the system
> will not display the "Safely Remove Icon" in the Notification Area (the
> systray). It's simply not needed in the case of a SATA-II device supported
> by the motherboard as it is in your system.
>
> Now with *some* motherboards with some NVIDIA chipsets (and possibly other
> chipsets) the SRI *will* appear in the Notification Area. When it does it's
> entirely superfluous and need not be activated-accessed in any way with
> respect to a SATA-II "hot-pluggable" HDD.
>
> In any event you can connect & disconnect your WD SATA HDD in the identical
> fashion as you would, for example, using a USB external HDD. (I'm assuming
> of course that the SATA HDD is employed as a secondary HDD in the system).
>
> There is, however, one somewhat annoying feature which I'm nearly (not
> absolutely) sure applies to your ASUS motherboard. If you connect your SATA
> HDD *after* the system boots, the system will not detect that drive. You
> will need to access Device Manager, right-click on "Disk drives" and select
> "Scan for hardware changes" from the submenu. The drive will then be
> recognized and listed - and more importantly, usable.
> Anna
>
>
Hi Anna. Thanks for the tip. After double checking that no
applications were using this drive, I unplugged the eSATA cable. Vista
didn't even notice it was disconnected. The drive letter still shows up
in Windows Explorer and it still reports a drive exists!
I too have encounter the issue where an external USB drive does *not*
show up in the "Remove Hardware" tray icon. But the USB drives are
always hot swappable though because I plug in the drive *after* booting
Vista. As Arno commented, I would rather have drives appear in the
Remove Hardware tray because, when disconnecting, the OS will flush
write buffers and ensure that no processes have open files.
I had a firm hunch this USB problem was low level. It sucks that a big
manufacturer like ASUS does not produce fully compliant USB ports.
Maybe I'll have to get a good USB add-on card. The problem is at
minimal annoying and most likely dangerous to my data! :-(
Alexander Grigoriev wrote:
> For a device to show in "Safely remove" list, its driver (or its controller
> driver) should mark it as "Removeable". My guess is that an existing driver
> for your on-board SATA controller doesn't know that those ports are for an
> external device, so it doesn't mark them as such. The driver should also be
> able to detect hot plug. I guess the generic one is not.
>
> Regarding USB, it's very sensitive to the PCB layout from the controller to
> the connectors. I also have an ASUS board and its USB ports are all very
> unreliable. One port will only recognize high-speed devices as USB 1.1. Even
> though they all are connected to the same controller.
>
> "BDD" <bdd@nospam.net.com> wrote in message
> news:hTu%h.23395$Bk.14837@fe74.usenetserver.com...
>> Hi. So I've heard E-SATA is hot pluggable but its not working on my
>> setup. I have a fairly popular ASUS motherboard (ASUS P5-B Deluxe).
>>
>> I have an External SATA HDD connected right now through the E-SATA
>> connector on the back of the mobo with a 500GB Western Digital SATA. The
>> device works fine and gives good performance but Windows Vista shows no
>> options for disconnecting the drive through that "Safely Remove Hardware"
>> tray icon. From all appearances, I might as well have plugged this thing
>> into an internal SATA connector!
>>
>> Incidentally, my USB connected drives all connect/disconnect (usually).
>> That is one of the reasons why I want to switch to E-SATA. Not only for
>> better efficiency but USB has been proving to be unreliable at times where
>> it fails to recognize the USB drive forcing me to repeatedly physically
>> disconnect and reconnect the drive's USB cable until it finally works.
>> Grrr. Anybody else get this at times?
>>
>> I've gone through all the BIOS options I know but haven't come across
>> anything I recognize that allows/disallows E-SATA hot plugability. Can
>> anyone point me in the right direction as to how to get this thing to
>> work? Is this a BIOS setting, OS setting or both?
>>
>> Relevant System specs:
>>
>> ASUS P5B-Deluxe mobo (Intel P965 chipset) (BIOS version 1004)
>> Intel Core 2 Duo E-6400
>> 4096 MB DDR2-800 RAM
>> Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition
>>
>>
>>
>> TIA!
>>
>
>
Previously BDD <bdd@nospam.net.com> wrote:
> Anna wrote:
>> "BDD" <bdd@nospam.net.com> wrote in message
>> news:hTu%h.23395$Bk.14837@fe74.usenetserver.com...
>>> Hi. So I've heard E-SATA is hot pluggable but its not working on my
>>> setup. I have a fairly popular ASUS motherboard (ASUS P5-B Deluxe).
>>>
>>> I have an External SATA HDD connected right now through the E-SATA
>>> connector on the back of the mobo with a 500GB Western Digital SATA. The
>>> device works fine and gives good performance but Windows Vista shows no
>>> options for disconnecting the drive through that "Safely Remove Hardware"
>>> tray icon. From all appearances, I might as well have plugged this thing
>>> into an internal SATA connector!
>>>
>>> Incidentally, my USB connected drives all connect/disconnect (usually).
>>> That is one of the reasons why I want to switch to E-SATA. Not only for
>>> better efficiency but USB has been proving to be unreliable at times where
>>> it fails to recognize the USB drive forcing me to repeatedly physically
>>> disconnect and reconnect the drive's USB cable until it finally works.
>>> Grrr. Anybody else get this at times?
>>>
>>> I've gone through all the BIOS options I know but haven't come across
>>> anything I recognize that allows/disallows E-SATA hot plugability. Can
>>> anyone point me in the right direction as to how to get this thing to
>>> work? Is this a BIOS setting, OS setting or both?
>>>
>>> Relevant System specs:
>>>
>>> ASUS P5B-Deluxe mobo (Intel P965 chipset) (BIOS version 1004)
>>> Intel Core 2 Duo E-6400
>>> 4096 MB DDR2-800 RAM
>>> Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition
>>
>>
>> BDD:
>> Your WD SATA HDD with a SATA-II interface (3.0 Gb/s) has "hot-pluggable"
>> (a/k/a "hot-swappable") capability. Ditto your ASUS board with the eSATA
>> port.
>>
>> Ordinarily with connected "hot-pluggable" SATA HDDs connected the system
>> will not display the "Safely Remove Icon" in the Notification Area (the
>> systray). It's simply not needed in the case of a SATA-II device supported
>> by the motherboard as it is in your system.
>>
>> Now with *some* motherboards with some NVIDIA chipsets (and possibly other
>> chipsets) the SRI *will* appear in the Notification Area. When it does it's
>> entirely superfluous and need not be activated-accessed in any way with
>> respect to a SATA-II "hot-pluggable" HDD.
>>
>> In any event you can connect & disconnect your WD SATA HDD in the identical
>> fashion as you would, for example, using a USB external HDD. (I'm assuming
>> of course that the SATA HDD is employed as a secondary HDD in the system).
>>
>> There is, however, one somewhat annoying feature which I'm nearly (not
>> absolutely) sure applies to your ASUS motherboard. If you connect your SATA
>> HDD *after* the system boots, the system will not detect that drive. You
>> will need to access Device Manager, right-click on "Disk drives" and select
>> "Scan for hardware changes" from the submenu. The drive will then be
>> recognized and listed - and more importantly, usable.
>> Anna
>>
>>
> Hi Anna. Thanks for the tip. After double checking that no
> applications were using this drive, I unplugged the eSATA cable. Vista
> didn't even notice it was disconnected. The drive letter still shows up
> in Windows Explorer and it still reports a drive exists!
That is why doing this is an extremely bad and risky idea. Don't do
it if you care about your data.
> I too have encounter the issue where an external USB drive does *not*
> show up in the "Remove Hardware" tray icon. But the USB drives are
> always hot swappable though because I plug in the drive *after* booting
> Vista. As Arno commented, I would rather have drives appear in the
> Remove Hardware tray because, when disconnecting, the OS will flush
> write buffers and ensure that no processes have open files.
It is not only open files. Filesystem metadata itself might still be
bufferd.
External SATA (E-SATA) hot pluggabability? 
Anybody else get this at times?
Linear Mode
