Why aren't there external SATA drive enclosures?

[Goi]

Hi,
I was wondering why there aren't that many external SATA drive enclosures compared to PATA ones. I know there are tons of USB-IDE bridge chips around but it seems that only JMicron makes USB-SATA bridge chips, which I think is 1 of the reasons why there aren't as many of those enclosures around, but SATA has been around for quite a while now, so I was wondering why other companies such as NEC/Cypress hasn't made the bridge chips? Not even FW or eSATA for that matter. Are external drive enclosures just gonna disappear soon?

 

[Minerva]

ESATA is upcoming technology.

In two years it will be hard to find a PATA DVD drive!

 

[corkyg]

eSATA enclosures are starting to become more available. SATA has only been around for a couple of years while PATA has been around for over 20!

At the present time, externals are most popular using USB 2, and next, Firewire. eSATA will start to blossom.

Laptops are now being built with internal SATA drives. But, I have yet to see any laptop with an eSATA port. That would really help things.

I got a SATA external enclosure about 18 month ago - and it was not a good performer. It was not eSATA, but rather connected to an internal SATA port. The result was a constant stream of delayed write failures with that case. And since it was seen as an internal SATA drive, it was not hot plugable.

Now Vantec has the NexStar 3, eSATA/USB2 combo - it is a nice case and works well.

I don't see external enclosures vanishing any time soon. They are just too useful.

Companies will make specific chips when the market justifies the investment.

 

[Goi]

Doesn't eSATA need a port on the motherboard or some PCI card? I'd expect USB2.0 would be the most convenient/prevalent since just about any PC within the last 5 years has at least 1-2 USB2.0 ports. Why isn't USB-SATA that popular?

 

[Jose R]

Originally posted by: corkyg
Laptops are now being built with internal SATA drives. But, I have yet to see any laptop with an eSATA port. That would really help things.

The Asus ASMobile Z84jp has an eSata port. Here is a review from notebookreview.com:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3507&review=Asus+Z84Jp

 

[corkyg]

Thanks, Jose. That is the first one I've seen. Here is the Asus site w/specs:

Z84JP

The bad news is that it is a moose - a 9 pound behemoth well suited for home use, but lousy for travel. Anyway - it's a step in the right direction.

 

[Jose R]

Originally posted by: Goi
Doesn't eSATA need a port on the motherboard or some PCI card?

The Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 has an eSata kit with two brackets to attach to the rear unused PCI slots. The i/o is eSata and the cables connect to the mb.

The Asus P5B series of MBs have a single eSata input as a feature.

As fare as speed/bandwidth, I think it goes: USB2.0 < FW400 < FW800 < eSata

For external storage I would definitely use eSata or FW800.

 

[Operandi]

Mapower makes a couple.

I haven't personally used it but I've used a couple of their IDE based enclosures and have been impressed with their performance and build quality.

 

[Jose R]

Originally posted by: corkyg
The bad news is that it is a moose - a 9 pound behemoth well suited for home use, but lousy for travel. Anyway - it's a step in the right direction.

yep, I was actually going to buy it. But, after serious consideration I decided to just build a desktop workstation, because, as you stated, its not really that mobile.

 

[Old Hippie]

There's quite a few SATA enclosures at Cool Drives. I purchased 4 times from them. Some enclosures even have optional SATA/ESATA/FW/USB connectivity.

 

[corkyg]

Thanks for the link and the indorsement, O/H - those really look pretty good.

 

[Zepper]

You can also get PCI eSATA cards now. The main reason there aren't many SATA enclosures is that they knew that eSATA was coming down the road so who'd want it when you can get double or more thruput with eSATA. I've seen combo USB/eSATA enclosures too. That's the way I'd go if I were buying right now.

.bh.