eSATA Question

I'm thinking of getting an E6500 with docking station. I'm also going to be using an external HDD (probably a 1.5 TB Seagate Xtreme or 1 TB WDC Home Edition) for backup purposes.

What kind of eSATA cable will I need? Is it an eSATA to eSATA or an eSATA to SATA? I assume that the external drive takes an eSATA connector but I'm not sure what the laptop and/or docking station port uses. What are the preferred brands of cables?

Thanks,
Harvey

 

its plain old esata and the esata cable supplied with your back drive should work just fine i have the same machine and im currently using an esata external backup drive

 

Neither external drive comes with an eSATA cable (they do come with USB and Firewire cables). When I look online or in the stores, there are 2 types of cables:

1. eSATA to eSATA
2. eSATA to SATA

Hence my question.

Are the 2 connectors on your cable identical?

Thanks,
Harvey

 

The two cables are different.
SATA is an L-shaped connector. eSATA is straight. They are not interchangeable.

The connector on my E6400 is an eSATA connector and the connector on my external enclosure is eSATA. Most external enclosures have eSATA connectors but some very old enclosures might have SATA connectors. You should most likely get cable 1, eSATA to eSATA.

Örjan

 

i concur if it will most definately have the proper spec esata connection on ur drive especially these days as it is becoming much more common and the old style connectors just dont do the job of holding on aswell and as far as i know esata allows for longer cable length due to better shielding

 

Gentleman, thanks for the responses. I'll purchase the the eSATA to eSATA first and try it. I can always return it.

Thanks again,
Harvey