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I'm going to build a low power home server and I've been thinking about using some external eSATA enclosures so I can have external drives that I can add and remove from the server every now and then for backup purposes.
But I've never dealt with a eSATA drive before and I'm wondering how it works as far as plugging/unplugging goes... I've seen that eSATA drives are typically just plugged into a eSATA card that basically serves as a pass-thru to the SATA drives on your MB. So can one simply unplug and plugin a eSATA drive like they could a USB or Firewire drive? Or does the PC need to be shutdown first, just as if you were plugging/unplugging an internal SATA drive?
Is this really the case? I thought that eSATA II support was pretty much universal on modern motherboards... Regardless, I thought that it had to do with AHCI -- not the I vs. II issue – Andrew Flanagan – 2009-11-16T22:42:37.267
That's a good point. Below is info from Addonics web site. I may have presumed that eSATA II support was the difference:
"(1) Serial ATA hot swap feature works only with controllers basing on Silicon Image chip set from our inhouse testing. Other controllers that are not Silicon Image based may not support hot swap. You may consider adding one of the Addonics Serial ATA host controllers to your systems to ensure the hot swap capability. New controllers from Intel and other suppliers may finally support this feature."
I'll re-edit... – None – 2009-11-16T22:50:58.390