eSATA port for the Gen8: Adapter

[riahc3]

As a quick tip, these are selling like hotcakes on eBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-3-0-to-eSATA-External-SATA-3Gbps-Convertor-Adapter-for-2-5-3-5-Hard-Disk-/2

 

Great way to get a (relatively) cheap eSATA port for the Gen8 for those of us that have a eSATA external bay instead of a USB 3.0 bay.

 

The only "but" is that it works at 3Gbps; There are more expensive ones that work at 5 (eSATA's top is 6, but USB 3.0's top is 5)

[ikon]

They all seem to be from China. I seriously wonder how much trust you can put into the claim of 5gbps by some of them.

[hsw]

The ebay link is expired but those have been around a few years. It's not like a port on a native controller. First your operating system will be using a separate driver to see the USB device, which will present the drive(s) as external USB storage, not a SATA device. The pricier adapters e.g. with the JMB393 chip or similar have support for PM, while it's doubtful these generic pieces do. I'm not sure they even output the correct low-end voltage limit per eSATA spec. I've used the $40 Addonics JMicron-based adapter with Windows PCs-- it's fine in a pinch but still no substitute for a real controller on the PCIe bus. I took a RAID5 attached to the Addonics attached to a Renesas USB 3.0 card and moved it to an eSATA bracket leading off an AMD mobo port (set for eSATA voltage in BIOS) boosting the transfer rate about 50% immediately.

[riahc3]

These are just for eSATA connectivity. Whatever you get plus that (standards approved or whatever) you can be thankful!