Can I connect two PC's through eSATA instead of LAN?

[rising_suns]

Hello,
I have a computer sharing files to a second computer over a GigaLan network for our business, but the computers on the newtwork do not seem to be able to process the files as quickly as the master computer with the files on the local internal hardrive.

I have heard that eSATA is just as fast as if you were working locally with an internal hard drive. We were wondering if we can increase our file sharing speeds between the two computers by using eSATA (or some other way?) instead of a Gigalan network.

I only need to connect one PC to another PC. Can eSATA do this?

Many thanks.

[joelm3103]

Don't think this is a possibility sorry. It's not made to connect PC's together, it's an external interface for SATA devices.

[NoNameNY]

I agree, I don't see how its possible. The only real way to connect the two and share files are either through the network or with a cross over cable which essentially the same thing

[rising_suns]

Are there perhaps any external storage drives/NAS that have multiple eSATA inputs for connecting to more than one PC via eSATA? Or perhaps an external eSATA hub or eSATA switch? (just tossing out ideas here)

.

[joelm3103]

Don't think there are drives with multiple ports for that use but there is a eSATA Hub (5-Port Multiplier) but I don't think you would be able to network though, it's merely more to attach more than 1 eSATA devices to a single host.

[CalcProgrammer1]

eSATA is not a networking interface, the protocol specifies one master (the PC) and one or more slaves (the drives), it works completely different from network interfaces which use addressing and routing information to transmit data to another node on the network. I suppose if you wanted to rewrite the low level driver interface to the SATA controller to include networking protocols (assuming that the hardware even allows you to reprogram the SATA protocol, which it most likely does not), but this is a ridiculous idea even to driver programmers.

Just because an interface is fast doesn't mean you can use it however you want, network is network and SATA is SATA, two entirely different types of interface. If you did have a drive that had two eSATA interfaces (which is still a messed up idea) you would have to copy from PC A to the drive, then from the drive to PC B and you might as well just plug in an eSATA drive and then switch it to the other PC if you're doing this.

Depending on how much data you want to transfer, this is probably your best option. Use an eSATA drive to store all PC A's data, then move the drive to PC B and copy the data off. If you have gigabit LAN it should be fast enough to transfer that data anyways, I'd only see a problem with 10/100 LAN which is maxed at 10MB/s or so.

[rising_suns]

What about USB 3.0? USB is not a networking interface either, but don't they make some sort of USB bridge cable for connecting two PC's to each other?

[S0ULphIRE]

Nope, sorry. Same reason as why Sata and eSata wouldn't work.

[rising_suns]

USB 2.0 Host-to-Host Cable -- DataPro

Is this not a USB cable designed to connect two PC's? If it can be done for USB 2.0, maybe it exists for USB 3.0?

[S0ULphIRE]

I meant just by itself with a standard usb cable. Plugging in one to the other won't get you data transfer capabilities.

Of course it's possible to write up something which uses the USB protocol to send/receive data, which is what that link you posted does. Whether someone has written and released a program to do this via USB3 I don't know. If nothing has been released yet, your other options would be...
1. Buy two 10Gbps ethernet cards. Probably be about $300 each.
2. Buy two fiberchannel cards. Could cost anywhere from $60 to $500, depending on what you get.
3. Buy two more 1Gbps cards and configure load balancing on the PCs