ESATA

[parvardigar1]

I have a external hard drive docking station. It holds four hard drives.

The ports is usb 3 and esata. 

For the specs on this Z2 the page suggests to purchase a esata "HP eSATA Port Adapter 2 Brkt 628541-001 New FH966AA Standard & LOw Profile Brkt"

This one is not pci. Looks as though I connect the cable to one of the available sata ports - and the run a esata cable from the Mediasonic docking station to the eSata bracket. Is that all there is to it?

On this site the offer is for a PCI card:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/MXPCIE6G3S2/

Need help to chose the better of the two selections.

Thanks!

[BeemerBiker · Accepted solution]

That card does not support a port multiple.  You will need one to see all 4 of the drives. I am not sure how much faster the system will be using eSATA with a port multiplier adapter.   I have Stardom ST4-SB3 and it is much easier to use USB3 than eSATA but your device might be newer.  Some drivers the "eject" is not an option and one has to reboot to add / remove eSATA cable.

Some systems with eSATA have built in support port multipliers with the correct driver.   Have you tried your eSATA port?  Configure (enable) it for external use.  The ones i have seen in the past have  marvel drivers which support port multipliers. In worse case (HP has no multiplier support) you might have to look at the controller chip and then download a port multiplier driver from the manufacturer. 

The cheap PCIe port multiplier adapters I have used all require AHCI to work.  You can also get PCI port multipliers.  They are slower then PCIe but do not need AHCI.

[EDIT]  i got carried away thinking about accessing each drive separately.  If your "BOX" is configured are a single RAID device there is not need for a port multiplier since it will show up as a single device, not 4.   In this case you should be simply using the existing eSATA connector on your HP