Spec Will Cut External Drive Power Cords

Lucas123 writes "The Serial ATA International Organization just revealed that it is well along the way to finishing a specification that would remove separate power cords to external SATA drives or optical disk drives, allowing them to draw power from the host system. The resulting new cable, being called Power Over eSATA, will be compatible with the existing eSATA connector and support the current maximum interface transfer rate of 3Gb/s. The SATA organization expects the new cables to be released later this year to drive makers."

Comments

Cables

[ackthpt]

I wish they'd do something about this piss-poor connectors. I've had a number of them fail and had to junk them because they do not make a good solid connection, nothing prevents vibration from letting them slip.

Re:Cables

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you are not properly placing your vibrator?

Re:Cables

[TheRaven64]

and a non-native interface Every single interface since IDE and SCSI have been non-native. That's what Integrated Drive Electronics means. The controller no longer sends native commands like 'move disk head' and 'read bytes' it sends abstract commands like 'read block 1406.' Your on disk controller translates these in to native commands. It is no harder to build a device that accepts FireWire commands directly and translates them in to native commands than it is to build one that understands SCSI or SATA. Most current FireWire drives go via SCSI or ATA because there is a much bigger demand for ATA drives than FireWire, but FireWire commands are almost identical to SCSI commands so such a drive could easily be built.

Should have been in the spec from day 1

[krog]

Seriously -- it's two more pins. Why wasn't the spec designed right in the first place?

Re:Should have been in the spec from day 1

[RingDev]

It could have been a political issue in the industry as well. If there was strong opposition to any specific power over SATA spec, it could have held up the spec. Where as, going live with the widely accepted standard, and gaining a foothold, the spec now has the power to determine what the manufacturers should do as opposed to the other way around.

-Rick

Re:Obligatory remark...

[krog]

No one obligated you to say something that threadbare and devoid of humor. No one. You did it on your own.

no excuse

[krog]

USB has supported bus power forever. There's a protocol (devices can use up to 100mA without asking, up to 500mA with host device permission) and it works. eSATA, a newer spec, did not learn from this??

How about for internal drives as well?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Is there much of a reason that we couldn't have single power+data connectors for internal HDD / DVD drives as well? Things are better now that IDE cables are less common, but I'd still be happy for a cleaner interior of my cases.

Re:USB? Firewire?

[jandrese]

I think the advantage is supposed to be cost and speed. eSATA is faster than USB and Firewire (I think, dunno about the latest Firewire) and requires absolutely _no_ on board logic to work. With this new spec an external eSATA case is literally a metal box with a hole in it, maybe a passthrough connector if they're feeling swanky. They don't even need the transformer anymore. That makes it cheaper than USB and especially firewire.

Re:USB? Firewire?

[Solra Bizna]

FireWire is a fairly general-purpose specification, designed so that devices that require a fixed (and quite large) amount of bandwidth can be guaranteed it, and designed with device-to-device communication in mind. Its maximum bandwidth is 400Mbps (unless you count FW800, which I will as soon as I see a device that supports it).

SATA is a storage-device-oriented specification, designed pretty much so that drives can pump data over it as fast as they can read it, with a centralized paradigm and a much higher peak bandwidth at 1.5Gbps (or 3Gbps, but see the note about FW800 above).

Using USB for storage devices is perverted and wrong; it's synchronous, so your practical bandwidth is limited by the length of your cable and the response time of the nodes at either side. On the other hand, a design like that is pretty great for things like user input devices, which is one reason nobody ever talks about making FireWire mice.

So, in summary, SATA is more suitable for disks than FireWire, and USB is dog-slow. Any questions?

-:sigma.SB

Re:At least its not Power Over SATA

[theRiallatar]

You say POSATO, I say POSATA.

Wha-d-ya-mean "power cable?"

[DanQuixote]

One of my tech support calls was about 1980, my friend's mom had a computer, and she bought a printer, which she tried to hook up herself, but it wasn't working.

I went over there and quickly spied the problem... the data cable was connected, but there was no power cable hooked up.

She quite innocently and logically asked, "why do I need a separate power cable?"

People don't really give a damn that the power system and the data system are two separate systems. It really is completely reasonable for them to expect a single cable to power as well as communicate.

These folks shouldn't pat themselves on the back for a "new feature", they should try harder next time to close a bug out in something much less than 30 years!

This is a basic usability requirement that people persistantly ignore despite the rat's nests of cables running around all their gear. This is certainly one of the biggest reasons for the popularity of USB!

Existing power situation with SATA is hilarious

[dwalsh]

Parallel ATA (A.K.A IDE): Big Parallel data cable with a shitload of pins. 4 pin power cable.

Serial ATA: Serial data cable with just 7 pins. Power cable has twice as many pins!

Did they just move the lines to the power cable? :-)

Re:At least its not Power Over SATA

[MiniMike]

Maybe they could call it PATA to avoid confusion...