SATA Enclosure

  • Thread starter Thread starter Aidan
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A

Aidan

Hoping someone can help me out here. I'm finally upgrading my computer
system and trying to put together the new one on paper before ordering. The
computer will be used mainly for graphics work and home office stuff. I
know that I've decided on SATA for the hard drive (or drives) but I'm having
one problem. I would like (in theory) to have one 120GB SATA drive as my
main drive and another 120GB in an external enclosure for backup purposes.
That way if something horrible went wrong I would have a dupe of the main
drive that I could just pop into the system and be back up and running. The
problem arises in the fact that I can't seem to find an external enclosure
that supports SATA. Have I just not looked hard enough or are they not out
there yet. Or perhaps I'm just going about this in all the wrong way. Any
suggestions are more than welcome. Thanks in advance.

Aidan
 
Aidan said:
Hoping someone can help me out here. I'm finally upgrading my computer
system and trying to put together the new one on paper before ordering.
The computer will be used mainly for graphics work and home office stuff. I
know that I've decided on SATA for the hard drive (or drives) but I'm having
one problem. I would like (in theory) to have one 120GB SATA drive as my
main drive and another 120GB in an external enclosure for backup purposes.
That way if something horrible went wrong I would have a dupe of the main
drive that I could just pop into the system and be back up and running.
The problem arises in the fact that I can't seem to find an external enclosure
that supports SATA. Have I just not looked hard enough or are they not out
there yet.
Click to expand...

You have not seen them because SATA is an internal solution.
SATA can be external when as part of a SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)
enclosure.
 
By design, sATA is for use only within a single enclosure. It would
surprise me to find anyone selling an external enclosure with a true
sATA interface back to the main system.

Try firewire or USB 2.0 for your external drive needs.
 
By design, sATA is for use only within a single enclosure. It would
surprise me to find anyone selling an external enclosure with a true
sATA interface back to the main system.
Click to expand...

But you can get external sata connector brackets for the back of the case,
so surely these must be there to be connected to something?

Jaime
 
DING DING, we have a winner. Thank you Rod for understanding the question.
Any suggestions about an enclosure though?


Aidan
 
DING DING, we have a winner. Thank you Rod for understanding
the question. Any suggestions about an enclosure though?
Click to expand...

Fraid not, I havent noticed any that do what you want.
 
Jaime said:
But you can get external sata connector brackets for the back of
the case, so surely these must be there to be connected to something?
Click to expand...

It looks like the trade is again ahead of the specification makers.
Where did you find those brackets? Note that Highpoint is selling
those but for their external drive only recommend eSATA compatible
controllers (theirs) and that that external eSATA enclosure of theirs
is not even for SATA drives at all.
 
Hi,

This thread is quite old, but it's still one of the top results when googling for 'SATA external enclosures' so I thought I'd post up my findings.

1. You can now get external SATA enclosures, although you will need an external SATA bracket for your PC. Typically these come with your motherboard.
I recently purchased an Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe nForce4 SLi which comes with so many brackets if you were to use them all you wouldn't be able to install any PCI cards! One of these brackets is for external SATA drives. You can find out more about this motherboard here: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=98&type=expert

2. Here's an example of an external SATA enclosure I found when looking: http://www.mcsx.co.uk/shop/3-5in-external-sata-hdd-enclosure.htm It retails for just under £30 although I suspect there are many others out there but this is the only one I've found so far.

Hope this helps someone.
 
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