Re: Hacking my old eSATA Dock; and why will i (maybe not) fail to bypass the IC?

[Monkeh]

I don't know about eSATA cables, but internal SATA cables have never changed. I doubt eSATA cables have.

You should also note that technically a direct connection of an eSATA port to a drive is inappropriate. You're basically only getting eSATA in one direction, the drive may not be delivering the enhanced signal levels.

[faekjarz]

You should also note that technically a direct connection of an eSATA port to a drive is inappropriate. You're basically only getting eSATA in one direction, the drive may not be delivering the enhanced signal levels.

Well, that eSATA port on my PC is internally directly plugged into the main board, and in BIOS configured as hot pluggable. I tested another eSATA cable, one that is included with a 6gig rated eSATA Dock (which i can't keep), no bad CRCs.

[Monkeh]

So it may not even be eSATA at all. Excellent!

(this is why eSATA is a failure)

[RGB255_0_0]

So it may not even be eSATA at all. Excellent!

(this is why eSATA is a failure)

Nah. USB just made more sense. Then USB 3 fired the final shot. You can think of eSATA in the same way to Thunderbolt, except Thunderbolt has versatility.

[Monkeh]

So it may not even be eSATA at all. Excellent!

(this is why eSATA is a failure)

Nah. USB just made more sense. Then USB 3 fired the final shot. You can think of eSATA in the same way to Thunderbolt, except Thunderbolt has versatility.

No, USB makes no sense at all for fixed external storage, not even USB 3. eSATA just sadly sucks (crap connector, poor support for FIS, too easy to connect incorrectly).

[RGB255_0_0]

I don't recall them being designed for fixed storage. Around the time eSATA came out it was more of a stop-gap for people who needed to transfer files and didn't feel USB 2 speeds were enough.

Even though many laptops had a hybrid connector that fit USB 2 and eSATA it was too much of a niche like FireWire was, even though both were faster than the competing USB (at their respective release).

[faekjarz]

Maybe my SATA to USB bridges aren't sufficiently expensive to be feature complete; mostly i can't read SMART because smartctl doesn't like JMicron. So i don't like USB for mass storage.