Faster external drives arriving--slowly

[MICHAEL]

http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-6144673.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news

By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Brace yourself: there are good odds another port will be popping up on new personal computers
soon.

This one is for eSATA, an external version of the technology that's used to connect hard drives
inside the PC chassis. Unlike USB and FireWire, eSATA (short for external Serial ATA) lets
external drives communicate at the same speed as internal drives, so the technology could be
welcome for those trying to back up digital photo archives or who need added capacity for
storing digital music or recording video.

The big question for eSATA now is how widely and quickly it will catch on. But even cautious
people in the industry are optimistic that, at a minimum, it will be built into higher-end PCs
starting next year.

"Definitely in 2007, you'll see this populated as a standard feature on high-end PCs. In 2008,
you'll see that populated further into mainstream products," said John Gleason, manager of
worldwide consumer PC marketing for Hewlett-Packard, currently the top-ranked PC seller.

The higher speeds of eSATA compared to USB could grow more obvious as consumers try to wrestle
with ever-larger quantities of videos, photos, music and other data. "Backing up a terabyte
across a USB port would be incredibly painful. That's going to drive demand for a high-speed
port like eSATA, said Roger Bradford, who leads storage work for Intel's chipset and graphics
marketing group.

However, the challenges of eSATA are as considerable as its advantages.

continued......

http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-6144673.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news

 

[Saucy]

I like my iomega usb external harddrive - so I won't have to brace myself -
I will look forward to it.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I have an eSATA-to-go port on the back of my primary box. It works like a
"SATA-5" port and is equivalent to another port on the mobo. I have been
using eternal SATA ports on my test box for two years. They are on a
pass-through card and I have hooked up two ports internally to pass through
to two ports on the card and from there to external SATA drive enclosures.
I can boot from these drives and have been running Vista betas from these
drives. Transfer rates are many times faster than usb and firewire drives
and they work just like internal drives. There are eSATA connectors
available for ExpressCard 34 cards for laptops and I have been using one of
those on a MacBook Pro for nearly a year. There are now a number of ways to
use SATA drives externally with good results.

 

[MICHAEL]

Great info, Colin. Thanks.


-Michael

I have an eSATA-to-go port on the back of my primary box. It works like a "SATA-5" port and
is equivalent to another port on the mobo. I have been using eternal SATA ports on my test
box for two years. They are on a pass-through card and I have hooked up two ports internally
to pass through to two ports on the card and from there to external SATA drive enclosures. I
can boot from these drives and have been running Vista betas from these drives. Transfer
rates are many times faster than usb and firewire drives and they work just like internal
drives. There are eSATA connectors available for ExpressCard 34 cards for laptops and I have
been using one of those on a MacBook Pro for nearly a year. There are now a number of ways to
use SATA drives externally with good results.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You're welcome.

 

[R. C. White, MVP]

Hi, Michael.

My new (last week) EPoX MF570SLI mobo (with AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ in the
AM2 socket) has six SATA II ports and 2 more that support eSATA. But the
board did not come with any eSATA external connectors, so I don't know what
they look like. And I don't expect to need them any time soon.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Mail 7.0 in Vista Ultimate x64)