ESATA, card reader add-ons and stuff

[antemon]

Don't know where else to put this, so...

I was just wondering, where do you plug in those eSATA and card reader add-on that you put in a CD or floppy drive bay?

USBs and audio have those little thingamajigs in the mobo, what about card readers and eSATA and firewire?
For eSATA, do you plug them in the regular SATA slots? Where would you draw power? unless of course there's a separate power supply for the external drive...

 

[Proximon]

You can use an eSATA port as regular SATA, but you'll loose any ability to plug in on the fly... it would be like a regular SATA drive outside your case. Well, some boards seem to support hot-swapping any SATA drive, or make some claims in that area.

So, you plug an eSATA external port into an eSATA header.

Card readers usually plug into USB headers.

Firewire plugs in to firewire headers, also called IEEE 1394a.

 

[antemon]

thanks!

some laptops seem to have eSATA connectors, anyone else know if hot-swapping. Or maybe I can just get a card or something... would have been cool if my mobo had headers

oh wait, don't some newer laptops have an eSATA port?

 

[T1ger]

yes, some of the newer laptops do have eSATA. However eSATA cables/ports are data only.

So, you still need to provide power to the SATA drive or the eSATA enclosure.

So far, all of the eSATA enclosures I've ordered have a round power port in them that accepts .5 amps at 5 watts. This happens to be the same power output that USB provides. However several of the USB drives I have won't run off of 5watts at 5amps so I have to use the USB splitter cables that have 2 USB ends that plug into the computer and one smaller USB end that plugs into the USB enclosure. This allows the USB enclosure to receive 5watts at 1.0amps. I haven't seen any USB to round power cables yet though, but I guess they'd have to be out there or how are we supposed to power our eSATA enclosures off laptops. I would also venture to guess that they have the 2 USB ends that plug into the computer with a single round cable that plugs into the eSATA enclosure.

The most recent eSATA card I bought for my desktop came with the 2 eSATA ports on it and 2 round to round power cables. It draws the power for the card from the four pronged power cable in the inside of the computer and then pushes that power out the round cables to the eSATA enclosure.

Then again I have an eSATA thumb drive (kanguru brand) I've only used the USB side so far, but I guess it works with no power. So, maybe eSATA does provide some level of power.

Hope this helps.

--Tiger