External esata as permanent boot drive - update ?

[J421]

How workable to fully run and boot off of an esata MB and system with one or more esata external drives only. In other words, with no bare mounted sata drives ?

Would there be a downside to doing that ? There would be an advantage to the security of being able to detach the external drives when needed and wanted.

In earlier times, external peripherals of almost any kind would be quite slower than mounted, internal drives, etc.

That seems to be quite no longer be the case with external drives and particularly with the sata and esata.

Does anyone see a distinct downside in booting off an external esata hard drive, and using it as the permanent boot drive ?

 

[mpilchfamily]

I don't see what security advantages there would be. But i have heard of others having trouble using an external drive as a boot dirve. Not to mention the external drives are still slower then regular SATA drives. If you want a removable drive as your boot drive then get a drive cage that mounts in the 5.25" bays. You'll mount your SATA drive in a removable tray and can swap out drives as needed.

Something like this.
http://www.cwol.com/serial-ata...ive-sata-backplane.htm

 

[J421]

mpilchfamily,
As a gesture of charity in my direction for the new year, could you elaborate a touch on that ? I am all ears. Trouble with external drives. In the past I was aware of that. But an external drive is just an internal drive in an enclosure, is it not ?
I am sincere in this question. I am interested. Thanks in advance

 

[MyLeftNut]

I too had always thought eSATA provided identical performance as the SATA ports. Wasn't that the purpose to begin with?

 

[Old Hippie]

Technically, booting from eSATA should be a no-brainer but I can see that the way some MBs implement it, that there could be some boot problems.

I'm sure you could run your external from an internal SATA port (case pass-thru or SATA to eSATA cable trickery) but you will still have to power it with a seperate power cable. I know, I've done it.

The caddy that mpilchfamily has linked is basically just that but without the cable mess of true external drives.

I don't buy pre-made externals and all my eSATA drives may be a pubic hair slower but when I first benched them, they were the same as my internal units.

 

[JackMDS]

With SATA drive you do not even need External or Caddy this works very well.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16817990001

 

[0roo0roo]

http://www.futurelooks.com/van...ard-drive-dock-review/