Hello,

I have a few questions about esata that I hope you can help me with.
lets say I buy one of those new motherboards that have it built in,
so bracket containing : 2 esata ports, 1 power port. I could be mistaken tho..

1. Do I need an enclousure for an external hard drive? or can i simply get a cable to connect the esata and power port from the bracket to the hard drive? is it simply not recommended ?
2. I am interested to know how useable this interface is, can you install windows and boot from it? can you get speeds as a regular internal drive? (90mb/s avg speed)
3. If I buy a bracket (for an older PC), how would i install it? is it simply connecting the sata on the motherboard to the sata on the bracket? and how do i give it power? simple sata-connector-like power from the PSU?

I have toured the net, trying to ascertain the questions I have just asked you, they are all concerned with letting us know that there are 2 unidirectional cables for each side +3 grounds = 7 pins, and that there are 15 pins for the power... who gives a damn?

1. the eSata cable does not offer any drive power, so that's why you need an enclosure or some method to provide power to the external disk.

2.Generally eSata behaves as if you plugged the drive directly into the motherboard sata slot, therefore if you can boot to the sata slots on the motherboard you should be able to boot to the eSata drives just as easy.

3. The add-on brackets plugs work the same way as the onboard motherboard ones do. There is no drive power on the eSata cable in any circumstance. So there is no need to inject power.

I say this as someone who has several eSata 1TB drives.

Thanks for your comment,
Could it be that some esata brackets do provide power?
I believe I saw a gigabyte motherboard (G33-DS3R) that includes an esata bracket that has a power port (at the back of the computer, allegedly to provide power for the esata device). I could be wrong though..