OT: eSATA, anyone tried it yet?

farss wrote on 7/8/2006, 6:27 PM

Just found that one of my new systems came with an eSATA port hung out the back. Initial research on what eSATA offers looks very promising but as always there's more technical stuff to digest than I really have time for so I'm wondering if anyone here has any views on this.
Some external eSATA boxes offer lots of grunt and huge amounts of storage (for a price), it certainly seems more attractive the 1394 for hanging extra storage off the back of systems.

Bob.

Comments

Jay-Hancock wrote on 7/8/2006, 6:38 PM

I have an eSATA external enclosure that I bought from Newegg.com for a whopping $39. Ran some drive tests on it and found it is every bit as fast as internal SATA (no surprise), which is dramatically faster than FW or USB. No comparison!

If you want to connect multiple SATA drives together in an external box, check out the following website: PC Pitstop. You'd need to buy an infiniband cable and adapter card, too. With this setup you could buy a 4-bay enclosure (which could theoretically hold 3 TB of drives) for $249, or an 8-bay enclosure with one hot-swap rack (bought separately) for $400.

Not bad, I think:-)

briang wrote on 7/9/2006, 2:17 AM

Hi Bob

I am looking at SATA or ESATA Drives, and therefore very interested in seeing the responses to your post.

I am in Queensland, close to Noosa, can you advise me who you purchased your system from, or where I might purchase an ESATA interface from in Australia?

Many Thanks.

BrianG
Silicon Forge Pty Lyd
Tewantin
Qld.

mfhau wrote on 7/9/2006, 2:41 AM

Slightly OT
Me and and my boys are putting together two systems using SATA2 Cards with 8 x 500gb drives in a Raid config to be used with Sony's CCTV Real Shot Manager software with up to 32 cameras per box. Sony haven't tested AMD chips yet which I find astounding so we are going to do a dual Xeon mobo and dual AMD proc and test.

I'll let you know how we go

mark

Brisbane

farss wrote on 7/9/2006, 2:44 AM

Well I needed to replace my aging office PC and I was after something small and a little nicer looking so I got a Shuttle XPC SD31P, kitted out with Intel Core Duo etc.
I didn't even realise it had an eSATA connection on the back until I bought another one for a client, shows how with it I am these days.

Anyway any existing SATA connection can be converted to eSATA, you just need the connector, these guys:
http://www.auspcmarket.com.au/
have all the bits you'll need at a resonable price, plus single drive enclosures, SATA controllers etc.
Just make certain you get an eSATA cable, unlike the internal SATA cables they're shielded and the device is supposed to not work if you use the wrong cable.

Just Google eSATA and you'll find lots more bits, included external drive boxes that use port replication to handle 12 drives for some serious storage.

Hope this helps. I think I'll get an eSATA box for the Shuttle, it's too cute to just run Office all day.

briang wrote on 7/9/2006, 8:07 PM

Hi Bob

Many thanks for the information on eSATA, which I will follow up on.

Regards

BrianG