OEM's are doing something you're not familiar with. I tried this route
thinking exactly what you said. However, my Dell motherboard was built
before the existence of the eSATA spec or in ignorance or defiance of
it. When I attached my external drives with appropriate backplate
connectors and cables the drives were simply not recognized. It was as
though they weren't even there. A call to Dell tech support informed me
that my 6 SATA port motherboard would not support eSATA drives and my
only solution was an eSATA adapter. Fortunately the mb has two PCIe
slots so I was able to use a card that's fast enough to support SATA II.
Once the eSATA adapter was in place the drives fired up instantly.
I really don't know why it doesn't work as the only difference I can
find between SATA and eSATA specs is the connectors (different shape and
far greater insertion life) and a slight change in voltage. Apparently,
small as it is, the voltage difference must be large enough that it
doesn't work.
The BlacX drive dock also has its own power supply.
Chuck Norcutt
Mike Lazzari wrote:
>> Which of these adapters can be used will depend on the motherboard....
>>
> Chuck if you have SATA headers on your motherboard you only need an
> eSATA adapter that plugs into the header and mounts into a blank slot on
> the back of the computer. This is for convenience only. Unless OEM's are
> doing something I'm not aware of there is no difference whether the hd
> is inside or outside the box. No PCI card is required unless you lack
> the mb headers. I have two of these to run external backup drives
> without having to switch wires. This still leaves one free eSATA port
> for occasional use. My remote enclosures have their own power supply and
> fan so you aren't pulling power from the computer.
>
> Another reason the marketed external drives are slower is because they
> are typically a 5400rpm or slower drive with less cache. This probably
> doesn't matter for a straight backup drive but I keep my remote photo
> drives connected all the time which is easy to do with eSATA and I can
> download photos off the camera directly to the hd. They are alway
> available for browsing or editing with no speed penalty.
>
>
>
> Mike
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