Adding e-sata to any External Hard Drive

corkproducers

Has anyone seen or done an e-sata hack before on an existing USB External HD Enclosure? (one which has a sata hard drive inside obviously)

Apparently, the only difference between SATA and e-SATA is:

1. The Transfer Speed
2. The pin-out (its inverted)
3. Slightly Different connector, e-sata has a shielded cable.

Here is the enclosure i want to mod in question:




What would be ideal is if i could add a switch and additional sata cable to the existing blue cable you see in the pic,
allowing me to switch between both e-sata and the boards USB.

Otherwise id have to open the enclosure anytime i wanted to change from sata to usb.

You can already buy Sata to E-sata cables online:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.10224

If i added this to my PC i could get the full Sata II speed also:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.9281

Any thoughts, suggestions?

Why not just get an enclosure with USB and e-sata?

Because hacking is more fun!

corkproducers

To mount a female e-sata socket to the enclsoure i could just buy this:



Unscrew the cable, throw away the metal bit,
cut 3 holes in the enclosure,
one for each screw, and one for the sata connector.

And use 2 nuts on the other side to hold it in place.

I still have to figure out how to solder a switch between the other end of that cable, and the existing blue cable that goes to the board.

corkproducers

Btw, this hack is very cool:

http://hackaday.com/2009/03/10/adding-esata-to-an-acer-aspire-1/

BaconZombie

Yeah tnkgrl's hacks are normally EPIC.... :pac:

corkproducers wrote: »

Btw, this hack is very cool:

http://hackaday.com/2009/03/10/adding-esata-to-an-acer-aspire-1/