eSATA

[Kenai]

When I built my PC a few weeks back, my new case had an eSATA port on it and the cable dangling around inside seemed to just be a normal SATA cable, so naturally I just assumed it was and plugged it into a spare SATA port on the motherboard (Gigabyte EP45-UD3L)

However I was just looking at some comparisons of the UD3L and UD3R on Gigabyte's website and noticed the following:

eSATAII
UD3R - 2 (by cable)
UD3L - 0

...does this just mean the UD3R comes with its own external adaptor plate or does eSATA actually need a specialised kind of SATA port? Will I blow my motherboard to pieces if I plugged in an eSATA external drive with it set up like I have it?

 

[JonJ678]

As far as I can make out, and the conclusion from a thread I started on here, esata and sata are exactly the same. esata has a more shielded cable to help stop electrical interference outside the case, but that's all.

Every esata backplate, and every case with an esata port on the front which I've seen has a red sata cable coming from the back of it to plug into the motherboard. You're fine

Note that hot-swap, i.e. unplugging/plugging it in while the computer is running won't work (and would be a bad idea in general to attempt) if the computer is in ide mode instead of ahci. It's a setting in the bios, Google how to change from one to the other if you're using windows or you'll get a blue screen when booting with the new setting.