Hello!
I have an interesting question - can I use 2 motherboards with external SATA connectors to link each other?

My plan was to use my storage box's external SATA interface to connect it to an external SATA interface on my server. I would then just mount the eSATA connection to /mount/data or something on the server. I can't think of any reason that this wouldn't work, but I can't find anyone else trying it. I mean, everything is just a file, anyways, and a drive connected to eSATA needs a controller behind it, too. So, instead of having a single drive with a controller, I'd be using the controller on the storage box to represent a single drive. Is eSATA a viable backbone connection, or do I need a HBA?

Any insights? I'm not quite sure how to go about doing this, or if there's a reason it wouldn't work. I can also link (on my storage box) the internal sata to the external sata via controller (nforce4 SLI chipset) and/or RAID. What do you guys think?

P.S. - I didn't want to complicate the whole thing, but the storage box will be Solaris 10 using ZFS, in case it matters.

If your trying to connect the motherboards directly to each other using the eSATA port, I don't think that will work. From reading http://www.serialata.org/esata.asp, eSATA is simply a faster method to connect to external drives.


Depends on how many users will be reading/writing data to/from the eSATA drive(s). For use at home or a small office (10-20 people), I think it would be fine.

I was afraid of that
Thankfully, I decided to design it all in a such a way that I can still use the eSATA to connect to a RAID box I guess it goes to show, a blind squirrel gets a nut every now and then!
Thanks for your answers!