Why is it impossible to find a simple 4-port eSATA PCI-e card?

[miniyazz]

There are hundreds of 2 SATA, 2 eSATA PCI-e expansion cards out there for <£20. Yet try to find one with 4 eSATA and no SATA, and you're left with PCI-X cards costing up to hundreds of pounds (and one out-of-stock PCI card which means buying into a dying technology).

Surely no extra technology is needed to have 4 eSATA ports instead of 2 SATA and 2 eSATA?

Why is it so hard?


On a related note, there aren't any problems with using a SATA-->eSATA adaptor cable that I should be aware of are there?

Cheers

 

[miniyazz]

Thanks JonJ, I thought that was the case with SATA/eSATA. I do have plenty of SATA ports free (it has 10 ) so that's certainly another option, I was just hoping to manage by adding a single expansion card that I could port to another system with fewer SATA ports if the need arose. Obviously, as you've discovered too, they're hard to come by at a reasonable price, and from what rpstewart has said, it looks like the reason they cost so much in comparison to the ones that do two SATA two eSATA is that the ones that do two of each actually only do a total of two at once.

Anyway, I have enough PCI slots free for two cards, so I'll probably use one dedicated PCI-e card with 2xeSATA, and one backplate providing 2xeSATA via motherboard SATA ports, as I happen to have a backplate lying around with two ports on. They're presumably only going to be outdated as SATA 6gbps comes along anyway, so I don't want to be spending much on them

Cheers for the info.