Loss of SATA connections

Yup, my youth and enthusiasm has been beat.

There are plenty of us here.

I can remember most everything sooner or later.
The later seem to be leaps and bounds ahead of sooner.

Hoods said:

They told him the same thing in different words. They didn't say it wouldn't function at all, but that a USB 3 hub can't deliver USB 3 speed on a USB 2 connection.

Oh how words can confuse. That's what I was trying to say, but obviously not very well. Sorry for any confusion! (PC Casegear confirmed it - they're good guys to deal with and where I get most of my stuff.)

I thought that a " hub" was just an extension for increasing the number of your existing USB ports, and assumed that such a thing would run at USB2 speeds if it was plugged into a USB2 port.

For the record "he" is a near-70-yr-old granny.

Hmm 67 yo Granddad here Hoods :) and yes I get all my gear from them too as they are on the money when it comes to price if you compare them to a lot of the others. Mind you the shipping rates are getting a tad on the expensive side

Hoods have a read of these because I was also wondering if the external required power in addition to the data route laptop - Does eSATA require power source? - Super User look at the pics of the ports - I didn't know there were different ones to be honest.

The last paragraph in this says some interesting stuff too. Comparing eSATA vs. USB 3.0 | PCMag.com

If you are looking for the cards - Controller Cards

I suspect these would be the powered types but did not look that closely .

I don't know if this will help but I will explain how my eSATA works. This is what I use.

http://www.newegg.com/global/uk/Prod...82E16817707189

Option 1. Using eSATA on a external SSD Enclosure I plug in my eSATA cable into the Enclosure and motherboard for data transfer and also have to plug in another cable to a USB 3.0/2.0 port for power to the Enclosure.

Option 2. Just plug in the seperate USB 3.0/2.0 cable from the Enclosure to a USB 3.0/2.0 port on the computer. Nothing else. The USB 3.0/2.0 supplies power and data transfer.

Hoods said:

@essenbe, you said ...

if you get a USB 3.0 PCI or PCIe card, you can have USB 3.0. However, I would consider an eSATA extension. You will get much faster speeds with eSATA than with USB 3.0 and it has other advantages too.

Can you elaborate on that, please? Not anything I'm familiar with and none the wiser for Googling it. I can't see what plugs into the sockets of the PCIE card -- looks like sata sockets??

I have a 3TB Hitachi USB3 drives, and some smaller USB3 self-powered portables. How would I connect these using a sata extension, and did you mean a sata pcie card? TIA for any enlightenment.

At the time I made that comment we were talking about USB Hubs. That wouldn't apply to a USB PCIe card. A hub just extends and gives more ports. But, it plugs into 1 USB port on the computer. So, if you had 4 USB ports on a hub and it plugged into 1 port on the computer, that port it plugs into (on the computer) is only capable of a certain speed. So, everything plugged into the hub has to share the speed of the USB port it plugs into(on the computer). A PCIe card with several ports will supply ample bandwidth and is completely different than a hub. I hope that explains it better.