What Is eSATA3?

[EnderCat]

so I have this motherboard GA-990FXA-UD5 and on the IO there is this thing that looks like it says eSATA3 what is that and what is it used for?

[ARikozuM]

eSATA = external SATA 

 

It's a form factor that can supply power and provide data over one cable. Otherwise, they run at the same 6Gb/s.

[EnderCat]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

eSATA = external SATA 

 

It's a form factor that can supply power and provide data over one cable. Otherwise, they run at the same 6Gb/s.

what devices use this?

[ARikozuM]

You can buy a cable that connects to an external bay or just use a eSATA to SATA straight to a drive.

 

Mediasonic HF2

[EnderCat]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

You can buy a cable that connects to an external bay or just use a eSATA to SATA straight to a drive.

 

Mediasonic HF2

so I can basically just use external hard drive bays with it?

[SpaceGhostC2C]

3 minutes ago, EnderCat said:

what devices use this?

External hard drives and external storage units.

But these days most just have some USB connector, though.

[EnderCat]

1 minute ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

External hard drives and external storage units.

But these days most just have some USB connector, though.

so there is basically no point in having a esata port?

[ARikozuM]

1 minute ago, EnderCat said:

so I can basically just use external hard drive bays with it?

Yes. Some USB 2.0 to SATA adapters don't provide of amperage to spin a 3.5" HDD, but eSATA provides enough to do so. 

 

The Mediasonic that I linked has four bays and eSATA can't provide power for all of them, so a power brick is needed to supplement. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

Just now, EnderCat said:

so there is basically no point in having a esata port?

Well, there is the point of connecting eSata devices.

Just like any other port, it makes sense if you are going to use it, and it is irrelevant if you are not.

 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[EnderCat]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

Yes. Some USB 2.0 to SATA adapters don't provide of amperage to spin a 3.5" HDD, but eSATA provides enough to do so. 

 

The Mediasonic that I linked has four bays and eSATA can't provide power for all of them, so a power brick is needed to supplement. 

so esata is like a more powerful USB for external drives?

[ARikozuM]

Just now, EnderCat said:

so there is basically no point in having a esata port?

Sadly, it never caught on. I've used is a few times, but motherboards give you a choice between M.2 or eSATA and M.2 is superior thanks to the form factor and NVMe when usable.

[EnderCat]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

Sadly, it never caught on. I've used is a few times, but motherboards give you a choice between M.2 or eSATA and M.2 is superior thanks to the form factor and NVMe when usable.

BTW kinda unrelated question (but kinda related) would there be any reason for me to upgrade my motherboard anytime soon?

[ARikozuM]

Just now, EnderCat said:

so esata is like a more powerful USB for external drives?

Yes. Before USB 3.0, you needed to use a dual USB 2.0 to SATA adapter to provide enough wattage to the bigger 3.5" HDD's.

[ARikozuM]

Just now, EnderCat said:

BTW kinda unrelated question (but kinda related) would there be any reason for me to upgrade my motherboard anytime soon?

What are your full specs? 

Usage?

[EnderCat]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

Yes. Before USB 3.0, you needed to use a dual USB 2.0 to SATA adapter to provide enough wattage to the bigger 3.5" HDD's.

oh ok thanks! I probably won't need to ever use those ports but hey now I know!

[EnderCat]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

What are your full specs? 

Usage?

well I am not sure about the graphics card but I have 32gb of ddr3 ram (downgrading to 16gb soon), an AMD FX-8150, a 1.5tb hard drive, disk reader (hey don't judge if there is a cool game at goodwill for cheap on a disc I will buy it) and a rm750i

[deeddy]

eSATA is much faster than USB 3.0 with small files (for example images), due to USB protocol overhead. USB is basically transferring more data than needed, so it's wasting a lot of time. This comes from the fact that USB is not only meant to be used for hard drives, but for all kind of different devices. If you are transferring few big files, this overhead is negligible.

However, in real time operations, such as backups, eSATA copy times could be more than 4x better.

 

Number 3 in eSATA3 indicates speed, and 3 = 6Gbps, the same as SATA3.

 

Pay attention if your port is POWERED or NOT:

eSATAp (p=power) means it is a powered port. If that's the case, then you can use eSATAp cable and your hard drive will get the power thru the port (it's a single cable).

If it's eSATA only (no power), then you will need a T type cable with an additional power cable that gets power from another USB port.

 

However, things get a bit complicated here. There are differences in voltage on eSATAp ports. Such ports can supply 5V or 12V, depending on your PC. You can google for more details. However, most of the time, the voltage on eSATAp cables will be 5V.

 

For example, on a laptop, power supply can provide 5V only, and you can only use 2.5" (laptop/SSD) drives.

3.5" and bigger (desktop) drives are powered by 12V, so you will need an external power (desktop power supply + power cable, for example) and can't use them on a laptop eSATAp ports.

 

If you are using eSATA t cable (eSATA+USB), it can provide 5V only, since USB voltage can not be more than 5V.

 

If you can not / do not want open a computer and use SATA ports, my advice is to get an appropriate eSATA/eSATAp cable (they are cheap nowadays!) and use eSATA ports whenever transferring big amounts of data. Most of the cases it will save you a lot of time. For example, the last time I backed up my old 500GB HDD over USB 3.0, it took 16 hours to transfer all the files one way, due to a lot of short files (mostly images). Connecting the same drive to the eSATA port cut this time to 4 hours.

 

So, between eSATA and USB 3.0, I will always recommend using eSATA, due to higher speeds. Using eSATA (or SATA) is especially important for network storage (NAS) devices.