[OT] Does a multi-drive USB external hard disk rack exist?

[ms]

On 05/09/10 13:38, Liam Proven wrote:
> On 5 September 2010 01:37, ms<devicerandom at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>
>> Wonderful, thank you!
>> I don't have an esata port on my laptop, but I've seen there are usb
>> converters, so I guess it's not a big problem -or it is?
>
> No, as far as I know, you can't convert USB2 to eSATA.

Google disagrees:
http://www.google.co.uk/products?hl=en&q=usb+esata+adapter&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=99mDTPreCNS5jAe0mqSbCQ&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQrQQwAA


> It would be a
> foolish thing to do - USB2 maxes out at a *theoretical* 480Mb/s
> whereas eSATA, like SATA, runs at 1.5Gb/s - more than 3X faster - for
> the slow version, 3Gb/s for most modern disks and interfaces and 6Gb/s
> is coming.

I am perfectly aware of that but I don't need raw speed, I just need 
storage. I live happily with USB external drives. It's not foolish at 
all, if you can't plug eSATA but you can plug USB.

> For that kind of speed, you need USB3, which is still quite rare. You
> are more likely to find enclosures with eSATA than USB3 at this time.
>
> You need to find out if your laptop has either CardBus or ExpressCard
> slots. You can buy both and Cardbus SATA and eSATA controllers; I've
> seen them. (A simple cable will convert between SATA and eSATA.)
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expresscard
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_card#CardBus

Thanks a lot for the advice. It seems I haven't both of them (it's an 
Asus Eee 1201n), unfortunately.

m.