I used to use the front panel eSATA port on my PC case. I remember having to change a setting in the registry to prevent my Boot drive from showing up in the safely remove hardware list (not sure how to revert this, maybe that's the key to my problem..). I have now upgraded my computer (GBabyte P67A-UD4). Even after enabling AHCI mode in the BIOS and playing around with the TreatAsInternalPort settings in the registry I cannot for the life of me get my external hard drive to even show up in the drive list.
However, if I use the native eSATA port physically built into the motherboard, the drive works perfectly but I don't want to have to reach down the back of my PC every time I want to use the drive.
Screenshot of current BIOS setup shown...