eSATA/USB External HDD recognizable by USB but not via eSATA

Hello All,

I have a Rosewill 3.5" HDD External Enclosure which is connectable via either USB 2.0 or eSATA. I moved and somehow lost all my USB cables in the mix, and so I have attempted to now connect it via eSATA. Not surprisingly, it's not recognized by Windows 7 and it asks me to initialize the disk. I remembered from my original testing when I bought the enclosure about 2 years ago that this issue occurred and at the time the only thing I could figure out was that when you set it up you picked either eSATA or USB and had to stick with it, since once it was formatted with one it wouldn't be recognized in Windows by the other.

Unfortunately, my current pickle is I don't have a USB cable, I do have an eSATA cable, and I need some data off the drive pronto like. I spent an hour Googling this issue and found other people posting with the same/similar problems, but with no helpful responses (note, don't tell me to Google it unless you've done so yourself and found a verifiable working answer by doing so). I could go to the store and buy a USB cable, but at this point I'm frustrated by this nonsensical issue and I want to figure out why it's not working how it should. Logically, there is no reason why it shouldn't be visible appropriately to Windows via eSATA if it's working via USB. It's the same drive, same partition structure, etc. The only thing I can figure is maybe the actual adapter itself inside the enclosure is reporting different disk geometry when you switch between USB Mass Storage and eSATA Bridged Mode.

So, forums-dwellers, I humbly request your assistance with this issue since I've been unable to find answers anywhere else. I know with 100% certainty that the drive is fine and the data is intact. I also know that the cable and eSATA connection on the enclosure is working correctly. So how do I get this drive recognizable to Windows WITHOUT re-initializing the disk (which will cause irrecoverable data loss)?

 

Yep, the results are the same. This chipset does support eSATA hotplugging, so it didn't actually make any difference. It recognizes the device, but considers the disk uninitialized, so Disk Management wants to have me initialize the disk via eSATA. Over USB it worked previously.