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BIOS 3204 installed now Esata drive is freezing system

jpsgaming
Level 8
Hello,

I just installed 3204

For a year now Ive been using an external Sata HDD drive for backups. The drive is connected to a thermaltake BlacX dock and is connected via e Sata to my rampage IV board.

I never used to see the asmedia ASM106x pop up in BIOS boot until today (it pops up the same way the intel raid bios thing pops up during POST). It shows my Esata drive connected to it and so on.

In windows however my Esata drive is acting weird. It used to spin down when not in use. It didnt do it tonight for almost 3 hours and I wasnt using it. Also when I go to safely remove the device in the task bar that goes fine and it sais safe to remove hardware.

However...when I turn off the drive using the BlacX (after Ivesafely removed it using the remove option) power switch the computer freezes...nothing works...but then when I turn the drive back on everything immediately works just fine. SOmetimes it wont freeze the system...but when I try to run games or apps they freeze and hang then when I turn the drive on they immediatly start working.

I have nothing installed on the Esata either...its just for storage and backups....so that means nothing should be using the drive right?

I have never had this issue until I installed the new BIOS tonight...

Any ideas?

In order to make things work normally I have to turn the system off then power off the drive then boot the system with the drive off. Then things work fine.

My main drive is an SSD and I have 2x 1TB drives in RAID0 for other stuff (these are on the intel chipset with no issues)

The estata is connected to Esata and thats only the asmedia chipset.

Hope this makes sense.
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8 REPLIES 8

HiVizMan
Level 40
Flash back to the BIOS version that worked for you. 🙂
To help us help you - please provide as much information about your system and the problem as possible.

I am not certain this is BIOS related. I had this problem once before with an older BIOS and it had to do with a setting in the BIOS. I apologize that I cannot tell you which setting it was because I modified it unintentionally. Anyway, you might try setting everything in BIOS back to default and see if you still have the issue. My board is the R4F and I leave my external HDD on all of the time (connected to rear eSATA port via Iomega dock) and it works fine.

HalloweenWeed
Level 12
First, I assume your eSATA drive is connected to an Intel Black SATA 3G port (RIVE, you didn't say your mobo). If not, connect it so. With the eSATA drive connected, navigate in BIOS to the "Advanced" --> "SATA configuration" menu. Find your drive and enable "Hot plug."
i7-3930K; Asus RIVE; G.SKILL Ripjaws Z 4x4GB DDR3 1866; MSI 7870 2GD5/OC; Crucial M4 SSD 256GB;
Corsair 1000HX; Corsair H100, 4x Excalibur 120mm PWM CPU Fan p-p, AS5; SB X-Fi Titanium Fata1ity Pro;
Dell U2412m IPS 1920x1200; Cooler Master HAF 932 case; Tripp-Lite OMNIVS1500 UPS fully Line-interactive.
(EVGA site: ) And I have a second (wife's) computer, Eve.

Overclocking is useless to me if it is not rock stable.

HalloweenWeed wrote:
First, I assume your eSATA drive is connected to an Intel Black SATA 3G port (RIVE, you didn't say your mobo). If not, connect it so. With the eSATA drive connected, navigate in BIOS to the "Advanced" --> "SATA configuration" menu. Find your drive and enable "Hot plug."


There's a difference between SATA & eSATA, you do know this right?
The eSATA ports aren't even handled by the Intel controller on these boards, so no clue why you mentioned this info?
MB: ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition
CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 (Cooled by Corsair H100i w/ Noctua NF-F12 fans)
RAM: 64GB G.SKILL RipjawsZ 1600 (10-10-10-30)
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX Titan X Hybrid
TV Tuners: 2 * Hauppauge HVR-1800
Case: CoolerMaster Cosmos 2

jpsgaming
Level 8
Aftr thinking about this a few BIOS revisions back I noticed the asmedia popup in the POST but its been many months since I've seen it....must be due to previous BIOS versions.

Also about the hot swap option?

Both E Sata Ports are asmedia only.

In the BIOS menu with the drive attached and turn on it does not show it since thats the intel chipset I assume.

Only options for asmedia are to set it to ahci, and IDE ro disable it. (I have it on AHCI)


I wouldn't use the asmedia at all but for E sata its my only choice.

Oh and meant to say the other only option for the asmedia E sata is the O Rom setting it lets you pick enabled disabled or auto

only settings in Rampage IV BIOS for Asmedia chipset.

I changed the O (op?) Rom to disabled under the Bios for asmedia.
I left the asmedia storage controller enabled on ahci like its always been.
Drive still works in windows with this setting.
(as I said in a post above those are the only 2 options)
POST is now 10 seconds faster cause it used to show the asmedia POST then it would sit at a black screen for about 8 seconds then go to the intel raid post then boot to windows.

So that sped it up getting rid of the asmedia POST screen.

Drive still works in windows.

In windows I haven't had a freeze yet but Im waiting to see if the drive spins itself down to save on heat and wear and tear.

Red_Jhon
Level 10
Hello friend, I encountered the same problem .. during transfer, I had freeze of desktop. I think it is a problem of rom asmedia, so I changed the rom entering the last rom asmedia 0.951 and I solved all the problems.

I test this rom with driver Asmedia 1.3.8.0 and work perfectly.

If you want to try the bios, it's here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?v4ujvc7r72jqhz1