eSATA & Homemade HDD enclosure

[Lightning983]

Hello,

I have quite a few HDD's right now connected to my Gigabyte X38-DQ6, 7 HDD's (1 IDE) & 1 SATA DVD/RW.

Now, of those 7 HDD, i have 3 160Gb in RAID 0, 1 (IDE) is for weekly backups, and the rest i use occasionally.

Since i use them say once a day to store my work data & stuff i think its not very smart to have them run 24/7 along with my computer, because they will degrade faster, and its not necessary, because some of them are needed only once a day and some once a week.

But when i need them i need the best speed i can get, and that's why USB & firewire are out of the question.
NAS & other kind of enclosures cost quite a bit if they're quality, and i don't need them.
So i was thinking, i could use the eSATA connectors and external power connectors i got from Gigabyte (picture) and make the enclosure myself.

http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/3282/bundledw3.jpg

So the question is. Can i power the drives with the connector in the picture, and can i "hot swap" my drives with that?

I was thinking i could simply connect the eSATA to the 2 additional Gigabyte's 2 SATA ports, connect it to a molex inside my case, and simply pull the cables to a normal SATA HDD, and have it work just like it was inside my case?

Is that the correct way of thinking about it? And the most important thing is hot swapping. Will i be able to just "safely remove hardware" and plug the power from my drives without shutting down?


Okay, that way quite a long post, and if anyone has any inputs on this... help me out
So, thanx,
Tom.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Lightning983
So the question is. Can i power the drives with the connector in the picture,

Yes, I've done it multiple times with my Gigabtye board. And yes, it's every bit as fast as an internal SATA drive.

and can i "hot swap" my drives with that?

Read your motherboard manual. My Giogabyte P35C-DS3R manual actually specifically warns against hot-swapping with eSATA. Yours may be different, but I kind of doubt it, since they're from almost exactly the same time period. They use a different chipset, though, so it's possible.

 

[Lightning983]

Originally posted by: myocardia
Read your motherboard manual. My Giogabyte P35C-DS3R manual actually specifically warns against hot-swapping with eSATA. Yours may be different, but I kind of doubt it, since they're from almost exactly the same time period. They use a different chipset, though, so it's possible.

Crap... that's bad, because that's mainly the reason i wanna use eSATA. I really don't want to turn off my computer...
Is there any way i can do hot swapping over eSATA? i mean isn't that the same as those "quick dock" thingies from Sharkoon & ICYBOX?

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Lightning983
Crap... that's bad, because that's mainly the reason i wanna use eSATA. I really don't want to turn off my computer...

Hot-swapping of SATA connections can work just fine with the right drivers and right hardware. I use removable SATA drives on all my new office server installs and the various offices hot-swap.

From my reading, I see that some built-in eSATA connectors have been problematic, and I don't know all the reasons why. For my servers and desktops, I've been using add-in PCI or PCI-E SATA controller cards, always with Silicon Image chipsets (typically SI3112 or 3132). These show up as a SCSI controller in Windows Device Manager and the connected drives show up as "fixed (non-removable)" drives. There's no option to "safely remove" them. But you can hot-swap them as long as you are careful not to disconnect them until all writes have been completed.

Note that this isn't, technically, "eSATA". It's just plain "SATA". All my current internal and external SATA trays and housings have only the original "SATA" connector. When doing an external SATA connection, I use "external SATA" cables, which are available and are shielded.