[PLUG] laptop, eSATAp, bare drive

[Keith Lofstrom]

I like to back up my laptop hard drive overnight when I am on the
road - a dd copy to an identical drive.  That worked with PATA and
thinkpad ultrabays.  Not with SATA, though (long story).

Moving 500GB in 6 hours requires a fast connection - 190Mb/s 
sustained rate.  USB with overhead probably doesn't do it. 
I would rather not carry a case and a power adapter.  And the
drives will get bigger.

With the newer laptop, it looks like the optimum setup, in theory,
would be an expresscard34 "eSATAp" aka "powered eSATA" aka "USB/SATA"
card, to a cable that connects directly to the back of a 2.5 inch
SATA drive.  The SYBA SY-EXP50028 (at Newegg and Amazon) has the
right form factor, but the JMB360 chipset has bad Linux support.

Another possibility would be a cable with drive connector on one
end, eSATA and USB (for power) at the other end, and a Linux
compatable eSATA expresscard.  Plenty of linux compatable cards,
but I can't find such a cable.  I might be able to make one,
from an eSATA to SATA cable and a SATA-power and USB cable.

Any suggestions, besides waiting for eSATAp to become more widely
available?

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs