External Sata Enclosure.

Intending to purchase a Vantec Next 3 NST-360SU Sata external enclosure and a Seagate ST3160812AS Sata hard drive.

Will Acronis Trueimage Home build 3633 recognise an external Sata hard drive?

The enclosure will be connected via a Sata cable and not USB.

John.

 

John,

I have that same enclosure. I haven't tried it with TI but I can't see why it wouldn't work.

I have mixed feelings about the enclosure. I tried it a few months ago with my Dell 8400 and when the enclosure was running in SATA mode it froze the computer after transferring more than 3 GB of data. Everytime. It was fine in USB mode and that's how I used it. Vantec ignored my email requests for help.

Initially I couldn't "see" the external HD until I upgraded my SATA drivers to version 5 (Intel). Strange, as version 4 was enough to see the internal SATA HDs.

Last week I bought a Dell 9150 and the enclosure now works perfectly in SATA mode. I copied a 15 GB file to the external HD in 5 minutes. I still plan to use it in USB mode because intermittent external SATA is a pain. I have to enable a SATA port in the BIOS before using the external HD and disable the port after I disconnect the enclosure as there is an error message when I boot if a SATA port is enabled and is not connected to a drive. I only use the enclosure for 30 minutes a week.

 

Thanks for the reply Brian.

You state that you haven’t tried it with TrueImage! Really, the only concern I have is whether the TrueImage rescue CD will see the drive in Restore mode.

You don’t feel like trying the rescue disk and see if the external drive is seen okay?

Cheers,
John.

 

John, I can now confirm that in both SATA and USB mode, the external HD is seen in the TI CD Recovery Environment and in BartPE.

I'd be interested to hear what you think about this enclosure. Now that it works with my new computer, I like it better. PM me when you have sorted it out.

 

Thanks Brian,
Should be sometime later this week, I'll keep you informed.

Cheers
John

 

Hello Brian,

PM sent.

John.

 

Please, for the benefit of the forum members, don't start this practice of PM'ing and emailing solutions, or even comments...this is a forum and each input to it is valuable to the members that are trying to learn issues when following a thread.

How can we follow anything if you break this to a 'chat' by PM

...Allen

 

The Moderators frequently remind us that this is a True Image forum. The operation of an external SATA HD is not a TI topic. I'm happy to comment if the Moderators say it's OK.

 

It is a topic relating to Aconis True Image...some do of course use the SATA disks in enclosures. I would think it is very relevant! They are of course not just speaking toward SATA enclosures, but using them with True Image, no??

...Allen

 

Agreed with Alan. If it is relevent to TI please do post your comments ... In the future if you wish/need to have a Private Discussion via PM please don't publically posts notices/annoucements (eg. PM Sent etc.) ... simply communication through those PMs.

TIA;

Steve

 

Apologies to the group but in the defence of both Brian and myself I would like to point out that the first messages did concern the use of an eSATA external enclosure and TrueImage, but from that point on the discussion was dealing the enclosures only.
However, I can see that there is an interest with using an eSATA enclosure with the thought that it could be used for backing up images created by TrueImage so this my finding as at the moment.

I installed the Vantec enclosure but had no way to start and stop the enclosure from within Windows XP.
Inquiries have left me to believe that SATA-II does support Hotplug but it depends if the controller will allow this. It seems that my (Asus A8N-SLI) motherboard does support this but for some reason only in RAID mode and not in single disk mode.

At this point in time, hotplug seems to be used for servers rather than home users who use in single disk mode.

The tread below might be of an interest to anyone having this minor problem using an eSATA enclosure.

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/hotswapping-ftopict181710.html

The procedure I’m using to get around the problem is;

Turn the unit on from within Windows and then restart Windows, the drive is recognised and can be used.

Turning off the unit from within Windows results in a hung screen at “closing down and saving screen”, I now wait until Windows closes but before the BIOS screen and turn the unit off, this works well.

With the interest in eSATA enclosures becoming more popular maybe the motherboard manufactures will include hotpluging, hope so.

The above indicates the problem I have with an eSATA enclosure, Brian’s problems are slightly different, and I’ll leave it to Brian reply if he feels that he wants to.

Again, my apologies to the group.

John

 

Thanks dog. I have no comments relevant to TI with this topic.