Running out of SATA ports, can I use external ESATA port on my mobo?

A

amd7674

[H]ard|Gawd
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I’m running out of SATA ports on my main machine (see specs in sig – 8200 nvidia)… I was wondering if I can use an external ESATA port on my mobo with esata to sata cable (running into my case) to connect my internal HDD to it?

TIA ;)
 
Sure, aslong as you can get an esata to sata cable, then you can easily do what you want to do.
 
Max theoretical speeds are different for sata vs esata, but real world speeds may be close. See the sata/esata Wiki. They should be inter-operable.

eSATA vs SATA: Speed
If you make an eSATA vs SATA II comparison according to data transfer speeds, SATA is clearly the winner. While SATA provides a maximum data transfer speed of 600 MBPS, eSATA provides only 300 MBPS.
 
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Well if you're comparing SATA Revision 3.0 (6 Gbps) to eSATA (3 Gbps), then yea... but most hard disks don't even saturate SATA 1.5 Gbps. Expect eSATA 6 Gbps products soon with the SATA 3.1 spec
 
Max theoretical speeds are different for sata vs esata, but real world speeds may be close.
Click to expand...

I believe you have that backwards....Theoretical speeds are exactly the same but some enclosures may slightly slow eSATA speeds.

OP, you can use the eSATA port but you may need to install extra drivers if your eSATA port uses a different controller that your other SATA ports.

Check your MB manual for specifics.
 
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