esata external enclosure support on linux [abandoned]

DaggyStyle · Watchman Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5941

hello all,

I'm thinking of getting a an eSata external enclosure and put in it one of my hds, I've found the following one which might be good for my needs:
link

does anyone has any experience with such devices or esata devices and can share the support level in linux?

Thanks.
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gabrielg · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Nov 2012 Posts: 141

Hi, DaggyStyle,

Looks like a massive case :-)

I have some experience with a couple of brands... the enclosure/stand itself was never the problem (if they follow the standards properly, that is...), but my Gentoo installs sometimes failed to detect the connection. I tried this on a Dell laptop dock and an eSATA port of my HP Microserver.

From my laptop experience, I found that I needed to reboot the computer after docking to get the port detected properly (so, they'd work once, not very handy for docking in/out your laptop when you need fast external storage). Symptoms were that dmesg won't even bother saying anything at all when connecting the external drive. Maybe it was a BIOS problem, even though I upgraded to the latest and greatest. Never posted here as it wasn't critical/interesting.
As for the Microserver, it basically needs a BIOS hack to make it work properly, so didn't really bother.

Having said all this, all my enclosures/stands worked just fine on USB. If your hardware supports USB 3.0, I'd go for an enclosure that does that too, as it's a good compromise if your eSATA fails completely.

Good luck!

Gabriel

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 2:20 pm Post subject:

DaggyStyle,

I have one of these because
a) I wanted it in a hurry
b) Amazon were selling it half price
c) I had a slight preference for both USB and eSATA.
d) I wanted easy drive swapping

You won't have any problems spotting my review :)

I did stall the fan and the HDD temperature got to 50 deg C and was still climbing ... so it won't run fanless for very long.

Find one without a fan if you want to operate it in the same room as people.
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Computer users fall into two groups:-
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_______0 · Guru Joined: 15 Oct 2012 Posts: 521

judging by the size of those things I thought that was an enclosure for multiple drives driven by a multiplexer. But all that for just ONE drive?? I think it's cheaper just the bare drive plus power esata cable and/or a usb 3.0 adapter (pro tip 2.5 drives don't require external power brick). Problemo solutioned.

by the way internal sata ports with linux are hot-pluggable just fine.

DaggyStyle · Watchman Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5941

thanks for the info guys but I made a Duh! my mb doesn't have an eSATA connector.

sorry for wasting your time.. :oops:

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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the former - Albert Einstein

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 8:23 pm Post subject:

DaggyStyle,

You motherboard may not have the connector but your case may.
If so, it will have a wire you connect to a normal SATA port on your motherboard.
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Jaglover · Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 8:51 pm Post subject:

Actually, some enclosures come with eSATA bracket for your PC.
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 8:53 pm Post subject:

Jaglover,

Yeah - that too.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

DaggyStyle · Watchman Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5941

eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2013 7:16 pm Post subject:

I have an eSATA+USB case for one of my hard drives, ended up installing Gentoo x86-64 on it with an initrd that can detect whether it's plugged in via USB or eSATA and boot accordingly. Seems to work just fine. I don't have a SATA multiplexer so I don't know if that works, but of the two machines that I have that have eSATA ports, booting it is about as painful or painless (depending on how you view changing the boot drive) as USB... Otherwise eSATA looks just like any other SATA port to the kernel pretty much, and similar to USB (as it is hot pluggable too!)
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