890FXE / SB850 + AHCI = no hotplug ?

[Kobaltrock]

Ok, this has got me stumped.
After doing a clean install with vista 64bit, I have the AMD AHCI drivers loaded, and the BIOS has AHCI enabled, IDE disabled, and there is no hotplug support for SATA drives.
It doesn't even show the 'safely removed the device' icon, unless I stick a USB drive in.

I know SB850 supports AHCI + hotplugging, but it just isn't working.
Everything does look correct in device manager, so I am unsure what the deal is.

This is on a TA890FXE, aka the 'bug zapper'

Ideas ? Do other people with this motherboard have hotplug support for the SATA drives ?

[cbjaust]

Yeah, I've got an eSata portable drive that I use with my server (a DFI Lanparty SLI-D) and there is no AHCI on nForce4 so I just make sure the drive is idle and close any associated windows and then just pull the power followed by the connection and have no problems.

[zanzabar]

u do not do the safely remove a drive when its a hot swap, u go into the disk manager and set it to off line then pull it. i have had an msi gd790 790 and im on an asus m4a89tdpro now and they both do hotswap in raid and ahci mode.

side note, if u have esata and want to hot swap that most run from a jmicron chip so u have to have the ide and option rom for it enabled and the jmicron driver installed.

[Kobaltrock]

Yeah, I've got an eSata portable drive that I use with my server (a DFI Lanparty SLI-D) and there is no AHCI on nForce4 so I just make sure the drive is idle and close any associated windows and then just pull the power followed by the connection and have no problems.

Hmm? On my Ultra-D, using the nvidia drivers, I *do* have hotswap support on XP, using the "safely remove device" icon...

u do not do the safely remove a drive when its a hot swap, u go into the disk manager and set it to off line then pull it. i have had an msi gd790 790 and im on an asus m4a89tdpro now and they both do hotswap in raid and ahci mode.

side note, if u have esata and want to hot swap that most run from a jmicron chip so u have to have the ide and option rom for it enabled and the jmicron driver installed.

Eh? Why would this be the case, that seems to be a very crappy way of doing it. In XP, as I mentioned above, all my SATA HDs were listed in the 'safely remove device' icon... I assumed it would be the same thing for Vista / Win 7 ?

[zanzabar]

i did not know that xp was like and i dont think it was supposed to, u need to go to the storage manager then right click on the drive (not the partition and hit offline)

[Kobaltrock]

i did not know that xp was like and i dont think it was supposed to, u need to go to the storage manager then right click on the drive (not the partition and hit offline)

Interesting, but the option to go offline is not there.

The options are
(ghosted) New Spanned Volume
(ghosted) New Striped Volume
Convert to Dynamic Disk
(ghosted) Convert to GPT Disk
Properties
Help

That is it.

[SoulsCollective]

You don't need to disable the drive. That's just silly. Removing the drive via the safely remove hardware dialogue is the correct way to hot-swap a SATA drive. If you don't have the Safely Remove Hardware option, your manufacturer hasn't properly implemented that feature in drivers despite the hardware supporting it - there used to be an app called HotSwap! that could do this for you.

Did you make sure that the system was set to AHCI mode before you installed Windows? And that you gave the AHCI drivers to the Windows installer during the installation process?

[AlleyViper]

Also some boards are set to combined mode by default, so the last two ports (sata 4+5) will still be in native IDE (good for some optical drives).
To really make sure, set "Start" value from "3" to "0" in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Msahci

Reboot, make sure in bios you have AHCI set. Then in windows double check the driver used in device manager, if it's now using the generic MS one. After that, update with AMD Driver, and check if the previous one has been replaced.
If after that the AMD still isn't installed over the MS one (it happened to me with some ancient releases), manually updated the ms driver in the device manager and point it to the directory were the ati installer unpacked it's files, and then you'll surely be done.

Following that, with my sb750 I'll get every hd listed as removable, even the system one. IIRC, that won't happen with the MS one (that will also cause a ~10s delay when booting windows).

[Kobaltrock]

You don't need to disable the drive. That's just silly. Removing the drive via the safely remove hardware dialogue is the correct way to hot-swap a SATA drive. If you don't have the Safely Remove Hardware option, your manufacturer hasn't properly implemented that feature in drivers despite the hardware supporting it - there used to be an app called HotSwap! that could do this for you.

Did you make sure that the system was set to AHCI mode before you installed Windows? And that you gave the AHCI drivers to the Windows installer during the installation process?

Yeah, I thought going through storage manager was odd.
Yeah, it was set to AHCI before the install, and yeah, it had the correct drivers as well.

Seems that it is a BIOS issue of not supporting the SATA standard. The only other post I can find about this was with Asrock and their 890fx board had the same issue, and a BIOS update fixed that guys problem.

Also some boards are set to combined mode by default, so the last two ports (sata 4+5) will still be in native IDE (good for some optical drives).
To really make sure, set "Start" value from "3" to "0" in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Msahci

Reboot, make sure in bios you have AHCI set. Then in windows double check the driver used in device manager, if it's now using the generic MS one. After that, update with AMD Driver, and check if the previous one has been replaced.
If after that the AMD still isn't installed over the MS one (it happened to me with some ancient releases), manually updated the ms driver in the device manager and point it to the directory were the ati installer unpacked it's files, and then you'll surely be done.

Following that, with my sb750 I'll get every hd listed as removable, even the system one. IIRC, that won't happen with the MS one (that will also cause a ~10s delay when booting windows).

That key has it already set to 0.

The AMD driver is the correct one in device manager, the other controller is for the VIA IDE driver (which is also correct).

With the HD in port 1, the hot-swap bays in port 2,3,4,5, none of them show up in the safely remove hardware dialog.

It really seems like it is a BIOS issue of some kind. Guess I will e-mail Biostar and ask them what is up.

[zanzabar]

You don't need to disable the drive. That's just silly. Removing the drive via the safely remove hardware dialogue is the correct way to hot-swap a SATA drive. If you don't have the Safely Remove Hardware option, your manufacturer hasn't properly implemented that feature in drivers despite the hardware supporting it - there used to be an app called HotSwap! that could do this for you.

Did you make sure that the system was set to AHCI mode before you installed Windows? And that you gave the AHCI drivers to the Windows installer during the installation process?

i have always worked with hot swap for servers and with esata and if its from an internal controller i cannot remember ever seeing the drives in the safely remove option.

u should have something like this (it is in raw since its part of my old raid array and im not going to destroy it for an example)


and it should auto load the disk/drive when u plug a new one in

[Kobaltrock]

i have always worked with hot swap for servers and with esata and if its from an internal controller i cannot remember ever seeing the drives in the safely remove option.

u should have something like this (it is in raw since its part of my old raid array and im not going to destroy it for an example)


and it should auto load the disk/drive when u plug a new one in

I am missing the "offline" menu option. Hmm...

- there used to be an app called HotSwap! that could do this for you.

Forgot to mention, that is what I am using now, it does work, but I rather use the 'safely remove hardware' dialog, since AFAIK, that is the 'official' way to do it.

[zanzabar]

do u have the system using that drive, like for virtual memory or is it being indexed, ext

[Kobaltrock]

do u have the system using that drive, like for virtual memory or is it being indexed, ext

Nope.
Index service has been turned off, so that doesn't play a roll, and superfetch is also disabled.

[Kobaltrock]

Just a update on anyone who cares about this, Biostar has sent me a beta BIOS that fixes this issue!
It now works as it should, with the "safely remove hardware" icon.
Yes, it can be disabled as well. (It is a BIOS option to enable/disable hotplug support)

Kudos to the Biostar BIOS writer guys!

[AlleyViper]

Good news, thanks for the update!