What is eSATA?

External Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (eSATA) is an external interface used in data transfer and designed to work with most modern computers. It supports ATA technologies to provide internal bus interface for hard drives. Its main competitors are the USB 2.0 and Firewire 400. But eSATA is more advantageous due to its ability to transfer data at a speed three times faster. eSATA is also better because unlike the others it does not translate data from the interface to the computer thus saving on computer processor resources.

For effective use of eSATA, the computer has to have an eSATA connector or otherwise a bus card should be installed. The eSATA drives have a limitation in that their sizes are suppressed at some point.