I like to back up my laptop hard drive overnight when I am on the road - a dd copy to an identical drive. That worked with PATA and thinkpad ultrabays. Not with SATA, though (long story).
Moving 500GB in 6 hours requires a fast connection - 190Mb/s sustained rate. USB with overhead probably doesn't do it. I would rather not carry a case and a power adapter. And the drives will get bigger. With the newer laptop, it looks like the optimum setup, in theory, would be an expresscard34 "eSATAp" aka "powered eSATA" aka "USB/SATA" card, to a cable that connects directly to the back of a 2.5 inch SATA drive. The SYBA SY-EXP50028 (at Newegg and Amazon) has the right form factor, but the JMB360 chipset has bad Linux support. Another possibility would be a cable with drive connector on one end, eSATA and USB (for power) at the other end, and a Linux compatable eSATA expresscard. Plenty of linux compatable cards, but I can't find such a cable. I might be able to make one, from an eSATA to SATA cable and a SATA-power and USB cable. Any suggestions, besides waiting for eSATAp to become more widely available? Keith -- Keith Lofstrom [email protected] Voice (503)-520-1993 KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon" Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
