Strange eSATA card problem

[Loa]

Hello,

I've been using a sil3132 esata card for a couple of months. I have one external drive and one docking station connected to it.

This morning I unplugged the external drive from the card (the drive was powered down, of course), but it created a similar effect on the dock, which was working.

I received a message in the Finder, telling me that I had improperly disconnected a drive. The drive that was mounted in the docking station vanished from my desktop.

I checked the cables, but the docking station was still properly connected. I tried everything (even a complete restart) but I can't mount the drive in the docking station.

The eSATA external drive will mount using either of the 2 eSATA ports on the card, but the docking station won't. Strangely enough, if I use the USB connection on the docking station, it works flawlessly.

Is it possible that the eSATA "side" of the docking station is blown?

Thanks

Loa

 

[Loa]

Hello,

Instead of deleting the first message I'll post the "solution" if it affects others.

It seems that there's a cooldown or timer in the docking station. 15-20 minutes later everything is back to normal. All I did was try another eSATA cable and it worked. Then I switched back to the original cable and it also worked...

Curious behaviour, but it does work.

Loa

 

[MrLatte23]

power down first before unplugging

I thought eSATA was not plug-and-play like firewire and USB, thus why there's no eject icons in the finder. I've always heard that you should power down the computer then disconnect eSATA drives to properly unplug them. It's always worked fine that way for me, but then I've never tried unplugging them with the computer still on.

 

[Loa]

Hello,

You can certainly eject eSATA drives: just select it and hit Apple-E. As long as you can power down the drive (turning the external enclosure "off") before unplugging, you're fine. Once it's powered down, the system doesn't see it, so you can't harm anything by unplugging it: it's just like plugging and unplugging an eSATA cable with no drive attached to it.

Loa