I recently purchased an esata port that I connected to two spare sata breakouts that I have on my controller card. Wanted to use an external enclosure for preclearing hot spares. I can't get my server to see the hd in the enclosure. I don't think it's a problem with the disk, when I install the disk in a spare slot internally the server sees it no problem. Is something special required for esata connections?

I recently purchased an esata port that I connected to two spare sata breakouts that I have on my controller card. Wanted to use an external enclosure for preclearing hot spares. I can't get my server to see the hd in the enclosure. I don't think it's a problem with the disk, when I install the disk in a spare slot internally the server sees it no problem. Is something special required for esata connections?

 

Short answer - no, there is nothing special needed for eSata connections. Make sure all connections are secure.

 

If you can't get it to work, my guess is that the overall cable length is too long. You have the sata cable length from controller to that plug, and then the length of the eSata cable on the other side. I have a few eSata enclosures and one model came with a nice long eSata cable. I had constant problems with it dropping, which went away with a shorter cable. If possible, you might try swapping longer cables for shorter ones.

 

If that doesn't work, you could also try a sata to esata cable directly from a motherboard (or non SAS controller port), out of the case, and into the external enclosure. The enclosure would have to be quite close to the server, but that may work better. That little device looks nice but may not work.

 

On my older motherboard I had a built in esata port on the back, and wanted to use it for an internal drive. I simply used an esata to sata cable and looped it inside the case and it worked well.