I am presently still using this product, but I would not recommend it.
First let me address J. Skeoch's review: It is important to understand that an external harddrive is nothing more than an internal harddrive in an external enclosure. If your external harddrives are SATA II drives, then they will work just fine via an eSATA to SATA connection. I have two Seagate FreeAgent Pro external drives using 6' foot cables connected to my computer using this product and they work just fine.
However, this product did not work at all when it first arrived. My 6' eSATA cables would not even insert into this product. So I emailed StarTech and they emailed back with an 800 support number. The technician had me take off the support bracket and try each female eSATA connector seperately. Still did not work, but the reason was because there are little prongs that hold the male cable connector in place and these prongs had been pushed in far enough that they prevented the male connection from entering the female connection. I pulled the prongs out, reattached the support bracket, connected my 6' eSATA cables and presto! Everything works fine.
So why not recommend this product? Because the product's 12" cables barely allowed it to connect with the motherboard's SATA connections.
I recommend instead "Cables To Go" SATA to eSATA Dual Port Adapter [...] which comes with 20" cables and works just fine. StarTech 2 Port SATA to eSATA Slot Plate Bracket (ESATAPLATE2)
Perfect fit, perfect operation. Two issues to be aware of:
1. This bracket does not provide power, it merely jumpers to your internal (powerless) SATA connectors on your motherboard. There are a handful of accessories out there, such as combination USB/eSATA flash drive, and adapter cables to connect a 2.5" solid-state drive directly to eSATA, that therefore will not work with this bracket; you have to purchase a (more expensive) bracket that also ties into your PC's power. For any eSATA device that has its own power connector - i.e., the vast, vast majority of them - no worries.
2. Connecting cables could be a bit longer (they appear to be 10 or 12"). I have a flat receiver-style PC and had several centimeters to spare, even though the motherboard connectors are near the front. For a mid or especially a full-size tower, this could be a concern.
My Desktop PC's Motherboard had quite a few unused SATA ports, This 2 PORT SATA to ESATA slot Plate did the trick to extend the on-board SATA ports to an external attached ESATA Hard Disk drive.
It is well built, The length of the cable is about 12 inches and long enough to reach the port connectors.
This thing does not have any active electronics, Just an connector extender, Do not expect any magic to happen. Whatever your motherboard's SATA port capabilities are will be extended to the external device that you connect.
It is a good buy! Highly recommended for extending you on-board SATA connectors to ESATA devices.
I bought this to use with a startech hard drive dock that I bought, and it works perfect in combination with it. Esata is fast as it should be when transferring data between two SATA hard drives. Installing this into your mother board is also simple, and I didn't have any problems at all. Definitely recommended if you want or need extra eSATA ports for your computer.
I plan to purchase this product instead of the competing product by Sabrent. Sabrent's product has a 9" cable according to one of the reviewers. I easily found this product's specifications on Startech's website, and they state that the cables are 12" long.
Neutral rating of 3 stars for now. I'll update this review with my findings when I receive the product. - External'
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