I'm going to build a low power home server and I've been thinking about using some external eSATA enclosures so I can have external drives that I can add and remove from the server every now and then for backup purposes.
But I've never dealt with a eSATA drive before and I'm wondering how it works as far as plugging/unplugging goes… I've seen that eSATA drives are typically just plugged into a eSATA card that basically serves as a pass-thru to the SATA drives on your MB. So can one simply unplug and plugin a eSATA drive like they could a USB or Firewire drive? Or does the PC need to be shutdown first, just as if you were plugging/unplugging an internal SATA drive?
Best Answer
Your SATA controller (probably integrated in the motherboard) may or may not support this feature. It's likely if you're dealing with a new motherboard that it does. Basically, older motherboards supported something call IDE emulation rather than using native SATA Advanced Host Controller Interface (which does support hot-swapping).
From the Wikipedia article on SATA: