What is eSATA?

Apart from the more common Universal Serial Bus (USB) and FireWire 400, another external interface used in data transfer is eSATA. eSATA simply means External Serial Advanced Technology Attachment.

It is used for SATA technologies. In fact, SATA is considered as the next generation of internal bus interfaces for hard drives. This technology has been proven as more streamlined than its predecessors. It can provide greater transfer speeds through its serial structural design.

In contrast to parallel cables that are much wider and shorter, the cables used in SATA technology are a bit narrow and they can only reach approximately 3 feet. As a product of SATA, eSATA expands the possibilities of the data transfer technology in order to support external storage devices.

The main advantage of using eSATA is the fact that it is capable of transferring speed about three times faster than FireWire 400 and USB 2.0. Unlike FireWire and USB, eSATA does not translate data since it is being copied or moved from the interface towards the computer or vice versa. This enables the computer to save processor resources while allowing the user to enjoy high-speed data transfer. Moreover, eSATA also possesses a hot-swappable feature that greatly expedites the process of taking storage devices from one place to another.

In order to use the eSATA external disk storage, you need to make sure that your desktop computer has an eSATA connector. If it does not have one, you can install a bus card. This is in order to provide your PC with an eSATA interface. On the other hand, if you own a notebook computer, you can make use of a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) card. After this, you need to connect the eSATA external disk’s power connector to a specific power source. Thus, you can proceed on copying files from your computer towards the external disk.

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