I'm planning to buy an external HD enclosure that supports both USB 2.0 and eSATA (and firewire but I haven't found any that supports all 3 connection types yet). It must have eSATA so that it's fast on my own PC, and usb 2.0 so that I can connect it quickly to other peoples PC who don't have eSATA connectors. I've got a few questions here though that the webshop sites and google don't seem to answer. 1) Do there exist HD enclosures with eSATA-300 already? All the ones that I find for sale appear to have only eSATA-150. 2) Do HD enclosures with eSATA, provide a connector for both the SATA power supply and the SATA data cable, or is it only the data cable and does the power come from the power cord of the enclosure? I've never seen an enclosure with SATA connectors from nearby so I have no idea. This determines what type of expansion slot I need for my case. 3) I need an expansion slot because my case doesn't have eSATA connectors on the outside. Is it better to take one with two data connectors, or one with 1 data connector and 1 power connector? 4) Those expansion slots appear to be for the back side of the PC case. However I've got some unused CDROM trays and an unused floppy disk opening on the front side of my case. Do there exist devices consisting out of a SATA cable to connect to your motherboard, a front panel that plugs into a CDROM or floppy tray, and eSATA connection on the outside? It's handier to have it on the front of the PC imho :) [Edited by - Lode on August 29, 2007 5:07:16 AM]

Quote: Original post by D_Tr
I got an icy box IB-351 series for around 30 Euros, the version which supports USB 2.0 (480 Mbps)+ e-SATA 300 (On the package it says "sata 3 Gbit / s", namely around 300 MBytes / s). The package includes:

-Sata Cable (data)
-One of these small metal sheets you attach to the back of your tower with a sata slot on it
-An ordinary power adapter
-USB Cable

The enclosure has a small adapter card inside, on one side of which you attach your sata drive, and on the other one it has the e-sata data slot, usb slot and the power adapter slot

Take a look here: pic

Hello,

that looks like I want :)

I found the website of the manufacturer: http://www.raidsonic.de/en/pages/products/external_cases_gal.php and there's something that confuses me a bit:

In the list you see that there are a lot of 351's mentioned there, some have this kind of interface, others have another kind, but none has eSATA interface of 3.0GB/s (internally yes, but the interface not).

Where did you find yours for sale?

I found a enclosure that supports eSATA 3.0Gb/s here: http://www.acryan.com/alubox/ACR-HD50138.shtml.

It appears to have a set limit at max 1024GB though. While no HD's bigger than that are there now, there will in the future.

What's the point of this limit? If you connect the HD to SATA II inside it, and then connect it with eSATA to your PC, what thing is there in between that, that sets an artificial limit of 1024GB?