Question re esata
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pengipete
Rising Star
If it's onboard or connected directly to a motherboard SATA header - basically, if it's controlled by the chipset or a properly integrated third-part controller, then the board will see it as just another SATA drive. You can boot from eSata with no problems and speeds are exactly the same as whichever version of SATA applies to the port and drive.
If you're using a PCi/PCI-e card with Esata ports - it will depend on the card. In theory, if the card relies entirely an drivers rather than having it's own ROM, you wouldn't able to boot from the drive. I couldn't tell you if any cards do or don't support booting in practice or if the ones that do always work without problems. Transfer rates will be SATA rates according to the hardware used and assuming that the PCI card isn't really badly made - though, in theory, PCI slots will fall short if you were looking at SATA III.
A word of warning....
If you are using a strap from the normal SATA headers on the motherboard - the easiest, cheapest way if there's no built-in eSATA ports on a desktop PC - you should set the board to use AHCI or RAID mode rather than IDE as IDE does not support hot-plugging. (I prefer to set RAID mode even if I'm not RAIDing drives - on single drives it is just treated as AHCI but it makes it easier to install a RAID array at a later date)
One other thing - if you haven't already got the eSATA hardware, it may be worth checking out USB3 for an external drive - especially if your motherboard already has USB3 ports. In terms of transfer speeds, USB3 can be much faster the SATA II - this is worth a look - http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/11/04/usb-3-0-its-here-and-it-goes-whoosh/ The potential downside is the ability to boot from USB but most decent motherboard can do that these days.
If you're using a PCi/PCI-e card with Esata ports - it will depend on the card. In theory, if the card relies entirely an drivers rather than having it's own ROM, you wouldn't able to boot from the drive. I couldn't tell you if any cards do or don't support booting in practice or if the ones that do always work without problems. Transfer rates will be SATA rates according to the hardware used and assuming that the PCI card isn't really badly made - though, in theory, PCI slots will fall short if you were looking at SATA III.
A word of warning....
If you are using a strap from the normal SATA headers on the motherboard - the easiest, cheapest way if there's no built-in eSATA ports on a desktop PC - you should set the board to use AHCI or RAID mode rather than IDE as IDE does not support hot-plugging. (I prefer to set RAID mode even if I'm not RAIDing drives - on single drives it is just treated as AHCI but it makes it easier to install a RAID array at a later date)
One other thing - if you haven't already got the eSATA hardware, it may be worth checking out USB3 for an external drive - especially if your motherboard already has USB3 ports. In terms of transfer speeds, USB3 can be much faster the SATA II - this is worth a look - http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/11/04/usb-3-0-its-here-and-it-goes-whoosh/ The potential downside is the ability to boot from USB but most decent motherboard can do that these days.
Gorman
Author Level
Pengipete nailed it pretty much, think e (external) - SATA, so you can expect all the same behaviour and rules to apply as it would to a hot swappable drive. As above enable AHCI etc.
In my experience and what i have read you are better off with USB 3 if you transfer large files, eSATA will win out if you are transferring lots and lots of small files which make up a large size.
In my experience and what i have read you are better off with USB 3 if you transfer large files, eSATA will win out if you are transferring lots and lots of small files which make up a large size.