eSATA offers greatly increased speeds over USB or Firewire. When I gleefully purchased my 1TB Fantom G-force Greendrive Esata/usb 2.0 I did what I always do - bought an inexpensive generic cable for it. I've never had a problem with other types of cables when trying to save a few bucks, but I learned the hard way that for eSATA, all cables are NOT created equally. Learn from my mistake and do NOT waste money on cheap eSATA cables; if they work at all (cheap cable #1 was DoA), you will find the cable doesn't maintain a proper connection and drive access will be intermittent (cheap cable #2), which can be disastrous for data integrity.
I suspect a large part of this stems from the overall (IMHO) poor design of eSATA connectors in the first place. eSATA doesn't appear to snap as securely into place as firewire or USB, and whomever came up with the eSATA standard chose not to add screws or other fasteners to compensate for this. The problem is compounded by the stiffness of these cables, and in my case, the fact that I must use an eSATA ExpressCard adapter that causes the cable to extend an extra 3" from my laptop - making it vulnerable to being jarred or bumped. In addition, my setup requires a twist in the relatively inflexible cable to connect to my external hard drive, also adding strain.
Since I purchased the SIIG CB-SA0111-S1 3.3-Feet Serial ATA External Cable, I have had zero problems with connectivity. It works flawlessly despite the (again, IMHO) design flaws inherent in the eSATA standard. I highly recommend this cable to anyone for their eSATA needs. SIIG CB-SA0111-S1 3.3-Feet Serial ATA External Cable
Some other eSATA cables don't work with TiVo Series 3 machines because their connectors are too fat and stubby to fit the TiVo's recessed eSATA socket. This SIIG cable fits the TiVo perfectly - I used it to add a Seagate external drive to my Series 3 with no problems.
I recently purchased 2 1TB WD My DVR Expander external hard drives. My dvrs did not read the WD HDs and I tried over and over with no success. After reading customer reviews for the WDs I discovered that changing the stock cable to this cable had worked for some others that had the same problem. (yes, i too thought this seemed way too easy of a fix) But, YES it worked and both WDs were read the first time !!!
Note: One would think that a company like Western Digital would use a better cable rather than risk having problems ???
I bought this cable because it was recommended on a forum to fix the crappy connection between the Tivo and the expansion drive with the included cable. It cured my connection issues, now the expansion drive "just works".
The SIIG serial cables might be a little more expensive than the generic cables but well worth it.
These are also not as flexabile as the cheaper cables, which I now learned the hard way that they should be.
The SIIG's have moved at least 20 terabytes these last few months and have yet to find errors after verification.
I now also use then to verify if the external HDD has any errors and utility work.
Do your self a favor and bypass lower quality cables.
I saved a few bucks and lost gigs of data due to coruption and problematic connection issues with lower quality generic cables.
Trouble shooting is imposible with bad cabels.
Works fine with a 1 TB Western Digital and Segates, as long as the external and SATA HDW has decent BIOS.
I ordered this cable because the DVR expander drive reviews say that it doesn't work with the cable that comes with it.
This cable actually arrived before the drive did which was great.
Sure enough the drive did not work using the cable that comes with the drive. When I connected the cable that I bought, the Drive was immediately recognized. Everything works as it should and I couldn't be happier.
I used this cable to attach the 1TB eSATA WDG1S10000VN hard drive to my TivoHD and it has been working perfectly for over 2 weeks now. I am glad I followed the advice of other reviewers in using this cable instead of the one that comes with the drive. - Hard Drive - External Hard Drive - Esata - Dvr Expander'
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