Vista - eSATA Drive Question

I need to get a new external HDD for my laptop and I'm thinking of getting an eSATA drive. My question is this: Can any HDD be turned into an eSATA drive by housing it an enclosure which has an eSATA port or is there something special about SATA drives? I'm not sure whether I should buy an already enclosed SATA or buy the HDD and the enclosure separately (cheaper option). Thanks for your help.

On 05/05/2008 in message <O7GdnX4gPtmzW4PVnZ2dnUVZ_uCdnZ2d@xxxxxx> pbl
wrote:
A good external enclosure is the ANTEC MX-1 EC, it's on Amazon UK at:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ANTEC-COOLED.../dp/B000PJ4JDK

It does USB2 and eSATA and has a built in fan for cooling, you need to add
your own HD. You also need an eSATA connection on your laptop so make sure
you do (I would think they are rare on laptops).

Whether or not eSATA will work depends on how your computer is set up. If
you want hot plugging you need to have your SATA ports set up in the BIOS
as AHCI. If they are set up as ATA or Normal or Off (depending on the
terminology used in your BIOS) then you won't get hot plugging, although
turning the PC off, plugging the eSATA drive in and then turning the PC on
again should allow you to see the drive.

Changing to AHCI on an already installed system is not trivial, although
it can be done. If you want to do it then post again and people will point
you to the various guides that exist. Don't just change your BIOS settings
whatever you do or you may not be able to boot your PC!

PS - You should set Windows mail to post in plain text to newsgroups.

--
Jeff Gaines
Damerham Hampshire UK

"Jeff Gaines" <whitedragon@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:xn0fptlt93p60c000@xxxxxxI second the recommendation of the ANTEC MX-1 enclosure. I have one on my
desk and it keeps the drive cooler than the ones inside my tower and will
work with SATA drives up to 750Gb. I also found that hot plugging worked on
my computer with the sata ports set to IDE mode. I am using a gigabyte
GA-P35-DS4 motherboard with Vista 64.

On 05/05/2008 in message <#gVe7HrrIHA.1200@xxxxxx> Anna wrote:
I guess I must have had the only one in existence :-(

It was SATA 1 from memory and I had to convert to AHCI to get hot
plugging. Good to know it's easier with newer boards / SATA 2.

--
Jeff Gaines
Damerham Hampshire UK

They are not rare. They are just SATA cables and you have to be sure that
you get I to I or L to I as needed.

"Jeff Gaines" <whitedragon@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:xn0fptlt93p60c000@xxxxxx

On 05/05/2008 in message
<4CCD1F15-292F-40E4-8404-B9A61AAEBADE@xxxxxx> Colin Barnhorst wrote:
Assuming you are responding to my point about eSATA connections on a
laptop I would certainly be interested to know which laptops have them. My
Lenovo R50e certainly doesn't!

--
Jeff Gaines
Damerham Hampshire UK

For laptops without a eSATA port but with an ExpressCard/34 slot, there are
several adaptors like:
http://www.iogear.com/product/GPS702e3W6/
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16839113007

For laptops with eSATA onboard see for example the ASUS C90S (click on the
specs link below the thumbnails):
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/spec/spec_C90S.asp
Or if you prefer the specs on the ASUS site (I hate the slowness of the ASUS
site some days):
http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1...41&modelmenu=2

There are some others but all I know of are gaming laptops so far. I have
not tried booting off a hard drive connected to one of these onboard ports
like on the C90S because I don't have a laptop so equipped but it should
work. I know it is more of a problem booting off of a hard drive connected
to an eSATA ExpressCard adaptor, however.

"Jeff Gaines" <whitedragon@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:xn0fptvogh4c6h002@xxxxxx

"Colin Barnhorst" <c.barnhorst@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:8196115D-8137-4DB2-A2FD-E5D62D9B53BD@xxxxxx
Jeff & Colin:
Notebooks equipped with an eSATA port are indeed a rare commodity. To the
best of my knowledge ASUS is the only major player that has released a few
models with an eSATA port. I'm not aware of Acer, Dell, Gateway, Compaq,
Sony, etc. having *any* models with an eSATA port. If they're out there,
they're few & far between, that's for sure. More's the pity, of course.

Some time ago I had occasion to work with one of the ASUS notebooks that
came equipped with an eSATA port (I can't recall the model #) and we were
able to boot from that port with a SATA HDD that had been the recipient of
the cloned contents of the notebook's internal HDD. That was no surprise, of
course, since every eSATA port that we've worked with on various desktop PCs
have proven to be "bootable". (For that matter it really makes *no*
difference whether the port is a "normal" SATA one or an eSATA one). A
bootable external SATA HDD connected to either type of port will boot.
Obviously we're talking about motherboards that support SATA capability.

We have never been able to boot from a CardBus (a/k/a PCMCIA) equipped with
either a SATA or eSATA port. We've concluded that it's just not a bootable
device.

As I mentioned in my previous post, we're still experimenting with various
ExpressCard devices to determine their potential "bootability". Every one
we've come across is equipped with an eSATA port and they're supposed to
provide boot capability. However, our experience has been mixed to date
although we were able to boot from a SATA HDD connected to an Addonics eSATA
ExpressCard.

Colin, if you've had any direct experience with an eSATA ExpressCard I'd
like to hear about it.
Anna

We had this conversation a month or more ago. Remember? I don't have any
new reason to revisit it.

"Anna" <myname@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23svdV$vrIHA.672@xxxxxx

"Colin Barnhorst" <c.barnhorst@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:E9E07530-63B6-4F16-9C18-7D27381CA8E7@xxxxxx
Colin:
No, I really don't recall our "conversation a month or more ago". But do I
detect a note of annoyance in your response? If so, may I ask why?
Anna