New eSATA Standard to Drop Separate Power Connection

[Face]

http://www.laptoplogic.com/news/detail.php?id=4184

Sourabh Kalantri | Monday, January 14, 2008 7:12 AM

SATA-IO group works on a new specification that will provide power to eSATA devices without the need of power cables.

eSATA interface was designed to utilize the superior throughput of the SATA
standard without adding overhead like USB or Firewire.

As it stands today, eSATA devices require an external power adapter to supply the necessary voltage for operation.

The new SATA-IO specification will eliminate this requirement by providing power for a single drive directly from the host system using the Power Over eSATA cable.

Key benefits will be to maintain compatibility with the existing eSATA connector form factor and retain high performance at the current maximum interface transfer rate of 3Gb/s. External SATA offers the only 3Gb/s bus optimized for storage performance.

Power Over eSATA solutions are expected to be available in the market as soon as the second half of 2008. This will create a few business opportunities by using either a SATA Hard Disk Drive or a SATA Optical Drive in a portable external enclosure.

[AngryArtichoke]

Are you saying the rats nest by my case will disappear??

[Sly Fox]

Looks like it might actually be useful now.

[naokaji]

i wonder if it will be limited power like with usb where its only enough for a notebook hdd but for desktop hdd's you still need a separate power plug or if they manage to deliver enough power for regular desktop hdd's...

[Ugly n Grey]

i wonder if it will be limited power like with usb where its only enough for a notebook hdd but for desktop hdd's you still need a separate power plug or if they manage to deliver enough power for regular desktop hdd's...

If they're planning on supporting external DVD writes, there will be enough for any HD. The fact that USB power is enough for some USB connected 2.5" inch drives is merely happenstance. At 500mA that bus is not really designed for power distribution.

[stevecs]

This is the big item that eSATA was missing to make it really useful for the home user. I'm glad they're going to fix it, though a little late for my setup it will help for the future though.

[irev210]

very much agreed.

Most of the ESATA enclosures use a really bad power supply that sucks up 20+watts

using ESATA and taking advantage of internal PSU not only reduces wire clutter but will save lots of power.

[Nanometer]

It's about time.

[g1raffe]

This is good to hear, now I can get a nice eSATA external drive, :)

[Starscream]

Looks like it might actually be useful now.

Esata has always been usefull tbh. Especialy if u regulerly have to move big files seeing Esata is twice as fast as USB.