How Many eSATA Ports?
Daddy
Guide, that's enough for me to have a good basic understanding of what
eSATA is about.
My question is about how many eSATA ports I should be looking for in a
(Dell) desktop computer.
Since eSATA ports are mostly (if not only) used by external hard drives,
I guess the answer to my question is: You want as many eSATA ports as
the number of external hard drives you plan to attach at one time.
Is that correct?
Daddy
William R. Walsh
> Since eSATA ports are mostly (if not only) used by external hard drives,
> I guess the answer to my question is: You want as many eSATA ports as
> the number of external hard drives you plan to attach at one time.
> Is that correct?
Basically, yes. However, if you do not get enough, you can do some other
things:
1. Install a PCI or PCI Express expansion card that contains an add-in SATA
controller with eSATA ports
2. Use a SATA port multiplier to attach multiple eSATA devices to one eSATA
port (which may or may not work).
3. Add eSATA ports of your own by installing an internal to external SATA
cable. This plugs into a SATA port on the motherboard (or an expansion
card), converts it to an eSATA style port and makes it accessible from your
computer's exterior.
I don't know of any Dell systems that come with eSATA ports outside of the
really high end systems or maybe some of their laptops.
Also keep in mind that many eSATA implementations treat external drives as
though they were internal--in other words, the computer has no idea that the
drives are not internal and it may not offer the option to eject or unplug
them while running as a result. It is for this reason that choosing drives
connected via Firewire (arguably faster than USB) or USB2
William
Brian K
I have 2 eSATA ports but I only use one port as I disconnect the external HD
after I've finished the backup. I have several eSATA external HDs but only
one is connected at a time. I'd be quite happy with only one port.
Daddy
I did not know this (it was probably in that other 3/4 of Tom's Hardware
Guide); but in any case, isn't eSATA hot pluggable and hot switchable?
Daddy
Brian K
>
> I did not know this (it was probably in that other 3/4 of Tom's Hardware
> Guide); but in any case, isn't eSATA hot pluggable and hot switchable?
>
Daddy,
I use HotSwap to disconnect the eSATA HD.
William R. Walsh
> I did not know this (it was probably in that other 3/4 of Tom's Hardware
> Guide); but in any case, isn't eSATA hot pluggable and hot switchable?
It's *supposed* to be. However, I've tried and found that the Silicon Image,
VIA and Initio SATA controllers don't support this. Nor do internal SATA
ports connected to eSATA "breakouts". Some adapters, such as almost anything
built around the VIA VT6421/VT6421A usually have an internal-type SATA port
available on the exterior of the card...which is a violation of the
standards and the "wrong" connector to use but it will probably work anyway.
For the controllers whose data sheets are available, I don't see any mention
of pins that can be adjusted to tell the SATA controller that a given device
is external and therefore should be swappable. The driver packages that I
have seen for each of the above mentioned vendor's SATA controllers seem to
make the same assumption, that all devices are internal and therefore won't
be hot-swapped.
To be fair, I haven't investigated this too much. The only real benefit that
I see in eSATA is being able to tap the drive's SMART information over the
connection--something that is much more difficult to do and far from
universally supported with USB and Firewire drives. My personal preference
for speed, reliability and hot swappability with no special contortions is
Firewire 400 or 800.
William