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."

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.

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?

allowing them to draw power from the host system?

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to what? The external nuclear reactors we are using now?

Re:Should have been in the spec from day 1

[Daimanta]

Because it would require thinking and *gasp* some work.

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.

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:Should have been in the spec from day 1

[jo42]

Why wasn't the spec designed right in the first place?

Because most of the time, the people that write these specs, or design this stuff, don't seem to use any products in the real world...

USB? Firewire?

[snib]

I guess I don't understand the value of eSATA. I don't see many eSATA drives, and I don't see many eSATA ports on computers or devices. Do we really need to add yet another port to laptops, in addition to the audio in/out, multimedia card, USB, Firewire, VGA, DVI, S-Video, Serial, Ethernet, Modem, etc etc? Wouldn't it make more sense to start eliminating ports and making everything work over USB, or Firewire, or some other spec?

As far as the article, it looks like a neat new development, but I know that you can get power over USB and Firewire. Maybe not enough for an external hard drive (I don't know), but IMHO it makes more sense to upgrade the power capabilities of universal technologies rather than promoting an exclusively hard drive-related format.

Re:Should have been in the spec from day 1

[Anonymous Coward]

From a signal integrity point of view, you want the NOISY power connections to be away from the high speed SATA signal as much as you can.
It might not seem important right now, but it might come back and bite you on inferior cables or when they crank up the rates again.

From a easy of use point of view, it is certainly silly.

Re:no excuse

[RingDev]

...did not learn from this??

No idea, but a political argument theory holds more water than a "because they're dumb" theory IMO.

-Rick

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.

Re:no excuse

[Znork]

12W@12V would be 1 Amp, so you'd only need a marginally thicker cable(or two)

Multiply it by 4 for sata and 4-8 for USB, and you would, however, have a noticably thicker motherboard (and/or separate PSU connectors and caps beside the USB and SATA connectors).

It's most likely not the cable that's the problem but the actual electronics that have to support the rated draw of the cable. Or worse, imagine having motherboards that dont support the rated draw and having users calling tech support with 'my computer crashed as I inserted my USB cupwarmer and the keyboard with LCD display and cooling fan at once!!!'.

You'd end up having to have a calculator to figure out what devices you could actually attach to your computer at any one time. Much as I'm loath to say it, I prefer the wallwarts over that.

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

[DanQuixote]

Clearly you are a good engineer, and as every good engineer knows, it's all about trade-offs. If Tesla had his way, there would indeed NOT be a separate power cord for the TV.

Overall historically, we've made pretty good decisions about how to handle power. However, in the last 10 years I have been very disappointed with consumer electronics. Powering a device is a major requirement for anything we design, yet batteries still suck, wall-warts continue to proliferate, mp3 players don't charge via a standard USB port, and I STILL have to plug every last item into it's own special power cord, despite the inconvenience.

<rant>Why is power still an after-thought during product or specification design???!!!</rant>

Connect Everything Over Ethernet

[dogganos]

Why SATA and eSATA and IDE and USB, FireWire and DVI and and and??...
If everything just used a simple, yet as it has been proven efficient protocol like Ethernet, then our lives would be much easier.
Oh, and Ethernet also has Power Over Ethernet for the hungry devices. I wait for the day when I will plug an RJ-45 jack into my hard drive (which will not be a hard-drive, but an SSD).

My $0.02