Well, it's best to first define a few terms so that we are clear on what we
mean by all these confusing terminology. Feel free to modify the definition
as you see fit.

SATA: a general umbrella term describing the technology that is to replace
the IDE PATA technology which as we all have known all these years is not hot
plugable.

SATA drive: a harddrive that uses the SATA interface.

SATA150 drive: a SATA harddrive that is the first to use the SATA
technology. It has these maddingly easy to break off data cable connector. It
runs at a theoretical speed of 150MB/sec. By far, this type of drive is the
most prevalent of all the SATA drives in the market.

SATA150NCQ drive: a SATA150 drive that also supports NCQ. With NCQ, the
readhead is more efficient when it comes to accessing the data. Basically, it
means that the readhead does not have to move too much to get to the data on
the platters. This not only speeds up the data access but incurs less wear
and tear on the drive. Not to mention the reduced power consumption.

SATAII: an update technology to the original SATA spec. This is perhaps the
most confusing of all the terminology that drive manufacturers unlease upon
the consumers. Even I am confused as to what the heck does it mean. From what
I can tell, SATAII means that "either NCQ support or 300MB/sec."

SATAII drive: a drive that either has NCQ or 300MB/sec. But not necessaity
both.

SATA300 drive: a drive that may or may not support NCQ, but does transfer at
300MB/sec.

SATA2: I still am not sure the relationship between this and SATAII.
Sometimes drive manufacturers and SATA controller adapter cards like Promise
use the Roman numeral and sometimes they use the numeric value of 2. One has
to really dig deep in the product spec to find out what the drive really can
do (supposedly).

SATA2.5: This is where the SATA governing body put its foot down. Any drive
or controller cards that claim to be SATA2.5 compliant have to support at a
minimum three things: 300MB/sec tranfer rate, NCQ, and hotplugability. So
far, I have not seen a SATA product that has the SATA2.5 logo on it.

Hotplugable: the ability to plug and unplug an external device (not
necessarily only harddrives) while the computer is ON. However, you should
tell the OS that you are about to turn off the power to the external device
or in case of a USB flash drive, about to yank it out from the USB connector.

eSATA: This refers to a technology that is used to connect any SATA drives
to the motherboard or controller card in an external manner. Physically, the
eSATA connector is different. It does not have the L-shape. I am not clear on
the relationship between eSATA and SATA2.5. What I am clear is eSATA has to
be hotplugable because that is the whole point of an external drive, right?
Because my interest in faster transfer speed is as much as the ability to
power down an external harddrive while the computer is still on, I want to
know if any SATA drive or enclosure can do this. I deal with so much data
transfer not only as a tech but as a user who does video editing, so the
faster I can move data from an internal drive to an external one the better.

If I miss any terms, please fill in the gaps.

Ok, to answer your first question about the Vantec PCI card. No, the
external connector on that card is just like the connector on the inside of
the card. Both are regular SATA with the L-shape. Therefore, that external
connector is more of a convenience than any different type connectivity like
eSATA. I use it myself to connect my AMS Venus SATA external harddrive
enclosure with a SATA drive in it. I have never turned off this external
drive/enclosure unless I have shutdown the computer. And yes, when that Venus
enclosure is plugged into that Vantec card at its external connector, XP
treats it as an internal SATA drive. It's like one of those IDE or SCSI
controller cards. That means no green arrow in the System Tray.

Basically, as far as hot plugable drives go, unless I see that green arrow
icon, I will not power down the external drive until I have shutdown the PC
first. And I would turn on the power to my Venus enclosure before I turn on
the PC. My external SATA drive in this Venus is an expensive 400GB drive and
the hollow enclosure itself cost me $60. I am not willing to test its hot
plugability and risk a $450 investment. Not to mention the potential damage
to the computer itself.

Now that I have this ASUS motherboard, can you tell me in more details on
exactly what happens when you use the eSATA connector? You mentioned that
when plugged into the eSATA port, the computer "treats" the SATA drive as an
internal drive and therefore the user enjoys all the benefits that is of an
internal drive. Of course that is true, but you did not mention that whether
you plug that SATA drive into it directly while the computer is on and that
the computer detects the drive and the new drive shows up in Explorer? Do you
see the green arrow in the System Tray? If you don't, and when you want to
turn off the external SATA drive, you simply turn off the power to the drive
and XP does not complain like it would it you had power down an internal
drive (the litte red X over the icon of the drive)?

I guess my confusion is derived from the way you described what took place.
As you have noticed in my passages that involve my experience with the Vantec
PCI SATA adapter card, I mentioned exactly what I did. I have noticed from
reading online bulletin boards that unless the poster use the pronoun "I",
what is being said is ambiguous. Without sentences like "I did this and I did
that" from the poster, the readers get the impression that they read a sales
pitch rather a review. For example, instead of saying that eSATA connector is
hot pluggable, I would say that I pluged in a SATA drive to an eSATA
connector using a cable that is one end SATA with the L-shape (connect to the
drive) and the other end the non-L shape (connect to the eSATA port on the
motherboard). Then the computer recognized the new drive and I can access the
files on the external drive. And so on and so forth. Sure, it's wordy, but
this way, I can make it absolutely clear on what actions took place as
opposed to an ambiguous statement. At times, I am reminded of my English
teacher who always made sure that I use active voice when I write.

I think it should be clear what we get into before we try anything out that
is "hot plugable." I mean when I plugged in a USB thumb drive for the first
time while the computer was on, I made sure that I had read from a few
unrelated sources that were explicitly clear that the authors actually did
it.

In case you want to buy some SATA gears, try the Addonics website. It has a
lot of SATA stuff for sales.





"Anna" wrote:

> >> "Techmanblues" <Techmanblues@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> >> news:021D89D6-F976-493A-B17D-631E4764E2DD@microsoft.com...
> >> >I just bought a new high end motherboard from Asus, the one that has the
> >> >955
> >> > chipset. It has an eSATA port in the back. I have been doing some
> >> > searching and was surprised to find so little info on this. From what I
> >> > have uncovered eSATA is 100% hot pluggable. That means if I can connect
> >> > to
> >> > this port an eSATA external enclosure with a SATA drive inside, while
> >> > the
> >> > PC is on, I can turn off the external harddrive like I would with USB
> >> > and
> >> > Firewire external drives. However, I cannot find any info on how does
> >> > XP
> >> > handle eSATA external enclosures. In fact, I cannot even find an eSATA
> >> > eternal harddrive enclosure on the Web shopping sites. Does XP treat an
> >> > eSATA drive as external USB/Firewire drives in terms of hot
> >> > pluggability?
> >> > That is, there will be an icon with the green arrow in the System Tray
> >> > when I plug in an eSATA drive through which I can use to tell XP that
> >> > I
> >> > am about to unplug the eSATA drive from the motherboard?
>
>
> > "Anna" wrote:
> >> Techmanblues:
> >> The eSATA ("e" for external) port is a wonderful feature on your ASUS
> >> motherboard. By connecting an ordinary SATA HD to this port (but note the
> >> eSATA port needs a special eSATA connector on the signal/data cable that
> >> will be connected to it - see below) you now have an "external" device
> >> that's treated as an *internal* device by the system.
> >>
> >> Think of the advantages of this. For the first time in an XP environment,
> >> you will be able to directly install the XP OS onto an "external" SATA
> >> drive and that drive will be bootable. The more common scenario is that
> >> you'll be able to clone the contents of your internal day-to-day working
> >> HD (PATA or SATA) - using a disk imaging program, e.g., Ghost and the
> >> drive will be bootable - a capability that has eluded us with
> >> USB/Firewire external hard drives up to now. What better backup system
> >> could we hope for?
> >>
> >> Another advantage of using an "external" SATA HD is its speed. It will
> >> operate substantially at the same speed as an internal SATA HD and thus
> >> be considerably faster than a USB/Firewire EHD.
> >>
> >> AFAIK, the eSATA port does allow for "hot-swapping" of connected devices
> >> assuming the device itself has no problem with this capability. Again,
> >> AFAIK, SATA II hard drives meeting the 3 Gb/sec specification will
> >> support hot-swapping as long as the motherboard provides this capability.
> >>
> >> Still another advantage of the eSATA port is that it supports the latest
> >> SATA 3 Gb/sec specification.
> >>
> >> So you could connect a normal SATA HD to the eSATA port without the
> >> absolute necessity of containing that drive in any special enclosure.
> >> Theoretically you could plop it in a cigar box or even run the SATA
> >> data/signal cable directly to a bare drive. Not the most desirable thing
> >> to do for the average user, but it can be done. We generally set up our
> >> desktop computers with mobile racks (2) to contain our removable hard
> >> drives. It's a hardware arrangement that we strongly recommend for many
> >> desktop computer users. So we usually contain the "external" SATA drive
> >> in one of the removable trays that are also used in the mobile racks.
> >>
> >> Now, what about the power to that SATA "external" drive? You simply use
> >> the power from your computer's power supply. There's absolutely no need
> >> for an external power supply. So that's another advantage of this eSATA
> >> device, yes? Unfortunately the rub here is that ASUS did not provide an
> >> external power connector alongside the eSATA port. Why they didn't do so
> >> is a complete mystery to us. Actually it's simple enough for a user to
> >> run a >> power cable from your PS to the external SATA drive, but it does
> >> mean that you have to snake it out probably through one of the slots on
> >> the backplane of the computer's case.
> >>
> >> BTW, there's another device we came across that users may be interested
> >> in to connect an external SATA HD. It's called the SATAPOWPLAT1,
> >> manufactured or distributed by StarTech. It's available from
> >> http://www.cwol.com for about $19 (incl shipping) - at least the last
> >> time I looked. buy.com shows it for much cheaper, but it's never in
> >> stock. I assume the device is also available from other online vendors.
> >>
> >> This device is simply attached to the I/O bracket on the computer case's
> >> backplane. It comes with two external connectors - the SATA data
> >> connector and the 15-pin SATA power connector. Internally (the other side
> >> of its slot plate) is, of course, the SATA data connector and the normal
> >> 4-pin Molex power plug. So it's a simple matter to connect the device to
> >> one of the >> power leads of your PS. Why ASUS didn't use the same simple
> >> configuration with its eSATA connector is beyond me. Note that the SATA
> >> data connector on this SATAPOWPLAT1 device is a standard SATA data
> >> connector; it is not an eSATA connector.
> >>
> >> As I previously mentioned, the eSATA port connects to a eSATA data
> >> connector cable. One of the sources for this type of cable (comes in 1
> >> meter and 2 meter lengths) is
> >> http://www.macgurus.com/productpages...SATACables.php
> >> Item MC39EX-AB
> >> I guess it's also available from other sources. Unfortunately it's quite
> >> expensive for a SATA data cable (although it is shielded) - about $25 for
> >> the 1 meter cable.
> >>
> >> I'm not aware of any motherboard manufacturer aside from ASUS that has
> >> equipped their latest motherboards with the eSATA port. If anyone has
> >> information about this I would like to hear about it. And I'm similarly
> >> not
> >> aware of any laptop/notebook computers that are equipped with this
> >> feature. And it would seem a most desirable feature to be incorporated in
> >> those latter machines, would it not?
> >>
> >> It seems to me the eSATA port is the "wave of the future" that's here
> >> right >> now since it has the tremendous advantages of treating an
> >> "external" device as a normal internal device together with providing
> >> superior performance when compared with USB/Firewire external hard
> >> drives. I would think that more & more motherboards will come equipped
> >> with the eSATA port (as well as an external power connector port which
> >> the present ASUS motherboard lacks as noted above).
> >>
> >> I trust this information will be useful to you and others who might be
> >> contemplating this type of device.
> >> Anna
>
>
> "Techmanblues" <Techmanblues@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:6E906A49-F686-4484-81B7-9B249BB34C96@microsoft.com...
> > Thank you for such a detailed reply post. Has anyone actually used one of
> > these eSATA ports to connect to a SATA drive whether in a naked
> > configuration
> > (just plug in the SATA drive without any enclosure that has a SATA to
> > eSATA
> > adapter)? I guess I am looking for people who have actually done it.
> > Reading
> > about specs is all and fine, but does it work in the real world is all
> > that
> > matters.
> >
> > Basically there are several ways you can connect a SATA drive to the
> > computer externally.
> >
> > 1) The most basic way is a SATA drive connects to a SATA connector on the
> > motherboard. This is no different than having the drive inside the chasis.
> > The data cable simply runs through one of the expansion slits. XP will
> > recognize this drive as an internal drive. Even though the SATA spec says
> > > SATA drives are hot plugable, I have not worked up the courage to turn
> > off
> > the drive and turn the power to the drive on again while XP is running.
> > But a friend of mine told me that one time, he accidentally unpluged the
> > power to > the drive while the computer (XP) is on, and XP failed to
> > re-associate with > the drive. I believe that SATA (at least SATA 150), is
> > not 100% hot pluggable.
> >
> > 2) Quasi-external connection. I found in a computer store this device that
> > creates a SATA interface on one of the adapter card slit on the case. It's
> > pretty simple actually. You would mount this adapter to one of the slits.
> > The > internal-face would connect to one of the SATA connectors on the
> > motherboard and the outward facing side would be a regular SATA connector.
> > Basically it's an extension cord for the SATA connector on the
> > motherboard. Physically it looks nice and tidy, but logically, it's no
> > different than the first scenario. XP will treat this connection as an
> > internal SATA drive connection and therefore it will inherit all the
> > quasi-hotpluggable characteristics.
> >
> > Vantec sells a PCI SATA controller card that has one internal SATA
> > connector and one external SATA connector. The external one acts like the
> > dumb extension cord mentioned above, except with this PCI card, you do not
> > consume a SATA connector on the motherboard.
> >
> > 3) Half and half. Let's say there is a PCI adapter that has a bunch of
> > internal SATA connectors on the card and one eSATA connector on the
> > outside. When you plug a SATA drive into this eSATA connector, I assume it
> > will work and XP will recognize the external drive. But my question is:
> > will XP recognize the external drive in this half-and-half configuration
> > as a true
> > external drive like it were connected through a USB/Firewire enclosure and
> > the little green arrow icon shows up in the System Tray? If this is the
> > case, then the external SATA drive will be 100% hotpluggable from the
> > perspective of XP.
> >
> > 4) Full eSATA compliance. Now imagine the 3rd scenario, but now the SATA
> > drive is inside an enclosure that has eSATA on the outside. In this
> > scenario, the contact points between the external drive and the computer
> > is pure eSATA.
> > I am sure that this will be 100% hotplugable even when the SATA drive in
> > the enclosure is not SATA 300 AND the SATA connector inside the computer
> > on the motherboard is also SATA 150. Basically the SATA to eSATA adapter
> > acts like middleware to make sure that the connection to the external
> > drive is 100% hotplugable.
> >
> > I have read extensively on the eSATA spec. I am surprised however, so
> > little info is available on the hotplugability issue. It seems like the
> > people who > create the SATA technology places hotplugability of SATA
> > drives as a
> > non-priority. But in practice as you can imagine, think of the
> > possibilties
> > if a SATA drive that can transfer data at 300MB/sec and is hotplugable?
> > Think of all those hours people spend backing up data to extenal drives
> > using USB and firewire? Or tape?
> >
> > Working as a technician, I have spent so much time waiting to backup
> > people's data to an USB external drive before reformatting their old drive
> > to re-install Windows that I pray for a faster transfer. Almost all the
> > computers that I have worked on have tons of iTune stuff in the gigabyte
> > range. It's riduculous that I have to wait 30 minutes to transfer these
> > music
> > files to a safe place before I start working on the system. I charge
> > people
> > by the hour so I am sure some people think I simply dishonestly stretch
> > the
> > clock while the tranfer is taking place.
> >
> > If eSATA is backward compatible with SATA, then shouldn't all SATA drives
> > from now on should have the "non-L shape" eSATA connector on it? This way,
> > if this drive is connected to a SATA connector on the motherboard, the
> > BIOS and XP will treat it as an internal drive. But if you plug this drive
> > to an eSATA connector like the one found on my ASUS motherboard, then XP
> > will treat it as a 100% hotplugable external drive. In other words, by
> > equipting all SATA harddrives with an eSATA interface, you have the
> > flexibilty of internalize or externalize the drive without the need for
> > all these clumsy SATA-to-eSATA adapters. I think all drive and motherboard
> > manufacurers should get together and agree on this.
>
>
> Techmanblues:
> Re your opening comment: did I not make it clear in my original response to
> your query that I've worked with this ASUS motherboard and the eSATA
> connector? The information I provided was based on my experience with this
> device, limited as it is. It wasn't theoretical. If I didn't make that clear
> then, I'm making it clear now!
>
> You're absolutely correct that one *could* connect a SATA HD residing
> outside the computer case *directly* to an available SATA connector on the
> motherboard - assuming there *was* an available SATA connector for this
> additional connection. But having an eSATA port makes the connection that
> much cleaner, although as I previously stated, ASUS's lack of providing an
> external SATA power connector is most annoying, to say the least. The eSATA
> connector also makes for a more secure connection from the computer to the
> external drive. As you probably know, the current SATA data connectors have
> come under a great deal of criticism because they're not as secure as they
> might be. Another built-in advantage of the eSATA connector is that it
> supports the "hot-swapping" capability provided by the motherboard.
>
> The type of device you refer to under 2) is another workable alternative. I
> haven't seen any though that was equipped with the eSATA connector, just the
> usual SATA data connector. Does the Vantec model you mention come with a
> eSATA connector?
>
> I'm really not sure I quite understand your comments in 3). If the adapter
> device you speak of contains an eSATA connector, then a SATA HD connected to
> it and residing outside the case will be detected by the system as an
> internal SATA HD. There would be *no* reason why the system would treat the
> drive "as a true external drive like it were connected through a
> USB/Firewire enclosure". Similarly there would no reason for "the little
> green arrow icon (to) show up in the System Tray". You must keep in mind
> that under the circumstances we've been discussing, this "external" SATA HD
> is treated as an internal HD by the system. And that's the beauty of all
> this, is it not?
>
> With reference to your comments in 4)...
> Based on the (admittedly) limited experience we've had with the ASUS P5WD2
> and its eSATA connector, the device supports hot-plugging. We tried it with
> a number of different drives - WD, Hitachi, and Samsung, and all of them
> were "hot-pluggable" capable. Again, my understanding is that the eSATA
> connector supports this capability with SATA 300 Gb/sec drives.
>
> We most certainly agree with your comments about the desirability of having
> faster data transfer rates using external devices. And the use of the
> "external" SATA HDs that we've been discussing makes this a reality, does it
> not? Especially when you compare it with USB/Firewire external hard drives.
>
> And we're in agreement with your comments re the effectiveness of the eSATA
> data connectors as compared to the original/current SATA data connectors.
> But, alas, we don't think there's going to be any wholesale movement to
> these eSATA connectors in the near term. It's a pity they weren't
> developed/accepted earlier. C'est la vie.
> Anna
>
>
>