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Koutech Dual Channel Power Over eSATA PCI Express Host Controller with Built-in USB 2.0 Interface

Brand: Koutech

2 ratings

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Fully compliant with one-lane PCI Express specifications (PCIe x1 slot)
Two (2) external Power Over eSATA connectors
Power Over eSATA connectors will provide 5V & 12V bus-powered via its connectors
Enables you to connect up to two (2) SATA or two (2) Hi-Speed USB 2.0 external peripherals
Supports Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003/Vista/Server 2008/Windows 7/Windows 8 and Linux

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Product description

Specifications:
- Fully compliant with one-lane PCI Express specifications (PCIe x1 slot)
- Two (2) external Power Over eSATA connectors; which supports any two of,
- Two (2) 3.0Gbps Serial ATA II ports
or
- Two (2) Hi-Speed USB 2.0 ports (*3)
- Power Over eSATA connectors will provide 5V & 12V bus-powered via its connectors (*4)
- Eliminates the requirement for a separate power source with Power Over eSATA connectors , while maintaining compatibility with the existing eSATA connector form factor (*4)
- Enables you to connect up to two (2) SATA or two (2) Hi-Speed USB 2.0 external peripherals (with any combination of two SATA and USB devices)
- Fully Plug-N-Play and Hot-Swap compatible (*5)
- Supports Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003/Vista/Server 2008/Windows 7/Windows 8 (*1)
- Supports Linux (*1)

eSATA Features:
-Compliant with Serial ATA 1.0a Rev 1.1 specification
-Supports RAID 0 (Striping), RAID 1 (Mirroring), RAID 5 (Parity) and JBOD (*2)
-Supports bus master DMA at 3.0Gbps burst rate
-Supports high performance Serial ATA devices; such as hard disk drives, SATA enclosures, and other devices

USB Features:
-Supports Hi-Speed USB 2.0 interfaces via Power Over eSATA connectors & the internal header-pins (*3)
- Connects internal header-pins to on-board, motherboard or add on-card, USB connectors to enable Power Over eSATA to support Hi-Speed USB 2.0 function (*3)
- USB Specification v.1.0/1.1/2.0 compatible (data transfer rate at 1.5/12/480Mbps)
- Hi-Speed USB 2.0 is fully compatible with original USB system, peripherals and cables

System Requirements:
- PC with 256MB of RAM and 1.0GHz or faster processor
- One (1) available PCI Express slot
- Windows® 2000/XP/Server 2003/Vista/Server 2008/Windows 7/Windows 8 and Linux

Package Contents:
- One (1) PCI Express card
- One (1) USB header expansion cable
- CD software drivers
- User manual

Product information

Product Dimensions

5 x 2.75 x 0.25 inches

Item Weight

2 ounces

Manufacturer

Koutech

ASIN

B007TCRZKU

Item model number

IO-PESU220

Customer Reviews

2 ratings

5.0 out of 5 stars

Best Sellers Rank

#704 in Computer Internal SCSI Port Cards

Date First Available

April 12, 2012

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D. Brown

Perfect solution for adding more eSATA Hard Drives

Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2014

Verified Purchase

I have an old HTPC that I built about 5 years ago. With the passage of time and accumulation of more media, I needed to attach more hard drives. I had some extra 1 TB SATA drives available that were not serving any useful purpose, so I mounted them inside some cheap aluminum cases ($10 each) and attached them to my computer using this card. The card works beautifully and I can now transfer data at high speed, backup many GB of data quickly, or stream movies, or record television shows as desired. The card provides adequate power to use two 3.5-inch 1 TB HDDs simultaneously. I have not encountered any HD disconnect issues. Please note: Download the most recent drivers from the Koutech website and unzip the files to a convenient folder. Install the driver by first navigating to Device Manager, then choosing Update Driver, and navigating to the folder containing the files. Proceed as per the usual protocol. The downloaded driver does not include a .exe self-installer application. After installing the drivers, I also ran a firm where update, also downloaded from Koutech. My system is currently running Windows Vista 64 bit.

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Richard Estes

Outstanding power over esata card - hot swap, port multiplier

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2013

Run a raw drive, no enclosure needed

This card is great. It contains a 3132 silicon image controller chip, and it mates with a koutech power over esata cable. Koutech has two cables here at Amazon, one at $12 says only 5 volts, the other at $17 says 5 volts and 12 volts. Normal desktop 3.5" drives require 12 volts for the spindle motor, so don't get the 5 volt version of the cable, it's worth it to spend the extra 5 bucks.

You can take a raw hard drive, like I do, usually 3.5", and plug a special cable into the hard drive, which is meant to be used with this card, which supplies signal and power and which protrudes over the front of my everyday desktop. The drive comes in, hot swap, into disk management.

I own 3 of these cards, and two of the special koutech cables that go with the cards.

One card is in put away in storage, one is in a computer with floppy 5 volt power to the card, the other is in a computer with usb 5 volt power to the card, through the supplied usb connector.

You must note, that with floppy power there is a limit of using only one special cable at a time.

Back to the positives: It is super convenient - very nice indeed - not to have to crack open the case and run a sata signal cable out and run a separate sata power cable out the way I always had to do, every time I wanted to test a new hard drive.

When I buy a new hard drive, I first write 5 gigs or more to it and time it to see speed, then after exercising it a bit, I run it through a series of tests, like hdtune full error test, and western digital lifeguard basic test.

(By the way, Western digital lifeguard write zeroes - full erase - is the best tool to fix a "damaged" hard drive which might have pending sectors, etc. It will force any suspect or damaged sector to re-allocate, so that the sequential sector table will be full, which often fixes a "bad" hard drive.)

So I love that special cable. Additionally I have an esata cable plugged into the other port of this two-port card. I use that esata cable strictly for signal, of course, to connect to the external Cavalry esata enclosure.

I get esata speeds, much faster than usb 2.0, as fast as internal sata speeds, up to 100 MB/sec, versus practical 18 MB/sec of usb 2.0.

By the way, while both ports are hot swap, only one triggers autoplay, and also enables the safe removal icon in the system tray. That is the one I use for the esata external enclosure, the Cavalry. So I am able to treat it just like a usb enclosure. I power it on, auto play comes on, and before I power it off, I disconnect it through the safe removal icon, to flush the write buffers.

Okay, so the other port is not autoplay, nor does it trigger the safe removal icon. That is the port that I use the special power over esata cable on. I plug in a raw hard drive, and it comes into disk management. Now, if I were writing a bunch of data to that drive, I would be careful about removing it.

So I might do one of 4 things before disconnecting the drive: 1. I might wait about 20 minutes. Hopefully the buffers would have been flushed. 2. I might log off (not fast user switch but actually log off my user id) which hopefully would flush the buffers. 3. As a last resort, I might reboot, which will certainly flush the buffers. 4. In reading an amazon review this evening, a 4th option was discussed - a reviewer mentioned a free utility called Hotswap. He said to google "hotswap mt-naka.com". I just googled hotswap, and the first link was the one he was talking about because it led me to mt-naka.com. Interestingly enough, the product is from silicon image which is the company that produced the controller chip that runs this card. (Sorry - that's incorrect, read the === section below ====.)

===================================================== 4th option =====================
ALERT!! I just tested the hotswap utility, with good results!!
I wrote 9 gigs of information to a 250 gig Maxtor drive which is the clone of my main desktop hard drive (I use acronis true image for all my cloning) attaching the drive with the special power over esata cable, which does not trigger autoplay, nor does it trigger the safe removal icon. I ran the hotswap utility - which is privately developed, not by silicon image, but does work on the silicon image 3132 controller. IT WORKS BRILLIANTLY!!

I got version 5.0.0.0 with xp support. All you do is double click the utility, in this case the 32-bit version, and there is your safe removal icon in the system tray, in the color red, versus the windows color green. Otherwise as I mentioned above, there was nothing in the system tray, since windows xp does not give you a safe removal icon for that particular port of the Koutech card. (The hotswap author mentioned no longer needing to go into device manager and disabling the device, which I guess is another way to flush the buffers - I never thought of that - but I like this utility much better than doing that because it works exactly like the windows safe removal icon.)

GOOD JOB MT-NAKA! After a bit more testing, I'll activate his paypal contribution link button to thank him with a $10 contribution. [Note, like most things like this, you download in zip format which is a type of container holding several items, all in one zip archive - if you don't have a free unzipper, download free winrar - and by the way, if you have any exe file, which your anti-virus might quarantine for you without your knowledge, thereby causing you to lose any particular utility, such as this one, then use winrar to zip it into a zip archive where it will be safe - anti-virus doesn't bother zip archives. Right-clicking the desktop allows a "new" winrar archive after you install winrar. I just recently discovered this kaspersky anti-virus problem - otherwise kaspersky is great I hasten to add - I just renewed my 3-PC anti-virus license for 3 years. That also means do not discard this hotswap! zip file - keep it with the unzipped folder of this utility so you can always extract = get the exe file out of it, again, if it one day "disappears" for no reason <-- most likely due to over-aggressive anti-virus trying to protect you. :) ]
===================================================== end 4th option =====================

This provides easy testing of a new raw hard drive, without need for enclosure

DON'T LET THE FOLLOWING SCARE YOU - JUST READ CAREFULLY:
If you try to run two of the special cables that match this card, but you have used ONLY floppy power to supply 5 volts to the card, you risk losing both hard drives, due to what I have concluded is some kind of a design flaw in this card that limits the floppy 5 volt amperage to the esata ports (does not happen with usb 5 volt power through the supplied connecting cable) so that unfortunately two hard drives running at the same time will not be able to maintain steady controller board power, and you may ruin both drives, which is exactly what happened to me.

I still ended up buying two more cards later, total of 3, because I now understand the limitations and how to use the card and the special cable.

If you read this, you will understand also.

One card of the 3 is in stock, for potential use on a third computer, one is in a relative's computer where I found an unused 10-pin usb header on the motherboard and attached 5 volt power that way, and another is in my day to day desktop, where I have a floppy drive power connector plugged into the 4-pin header on this card, with the special power over esata cable on one port, and a regular esata cable on the other port, both feeding back to the front of the desktop where I can easily get to them.

So to repeat, as I just said, I DO presently have an everyday desktop, with this special power over esata card and the special power over esata cable, and I have ONLY floppy power supplying 5 volts to the card.

Yes, in my everyday machine, I DO NOT have usb power to this card - I could not find a usb header on the dell motherboard. I have only that floppy power to the card. So I have one special power over esata cable, and ONLY one. And I feel perfectly safe, with just the one special cable.

I have no qualms running any hard drive off this SINGLE power over esata cable. I can only run one, because the other special cable has been put away in storage.

As mentioned, plugged into the second port of this card, is a normal esata cable coming out to the front of my case. That is for supplying esata signal, to a drive inside a regular A/C powered esata enclosure, the Cavalry, which I highly recommend. So two cables come from the back out to the front of the case where I can reach them, an esata cable, and the special power over esata cable.

I have run many raw hard drives through the special power over esata cable, for testing, formatting, etc. with never any problem at all - works perfectly. But again, sorry to be redundant, only one special cable on that desktop tower, because of FLOPPY 5 volts to this pci-e 1x card.

On another computer, when I first encountered this cable and card, several years ago, I was able to connect the usb cable that came with the card, once I realized what it was for - there are no instructions, lol. (You are reading the instructions at this minute.) When I did connect the usb cable, then I saw that I was able to simultaneously power both of those special cables that I had purchased, with no problem.

However, further testing of those particular hard drives proved that they had already been damaged, before the usb cable was connected. I RMA'd them within the 30 day window, reported the results of the Western Digital Lifeguard testing, which indicated both drives were bad, and paid shipping, and I then received two new hard drives in exchange.

So the rule is: 1. usb power to this card through the usb connector that comes with the card, great, you can run two hard drives simultaneously with two of the special cables,
But 2. floppy 5 volt power to this card = run no more than one special cable powering one drive.

With usb power to the special power over esata card, you will have no problems. However, that depends on finding an empty 10-pin usb header on your motherboard. One of my computers had it, the other didn't. So in general, it is much easier to find floppy power and this is what you will probably do, in which case do not buy more than one of the special power over esata cables (get the 5 and 12 volt cable for $5 more.) With floppy power, the 5 volts that you provide will be fine for ONE hard drive, but not for two at the same time.

Other thoughts:
This is a high-tech item, so read this entire review. Some of this is repetitive - good - you need to really understand this and not make any of the mistakes I first made.

The driver software worked fine - I installed it in xp. The chip is silicon image 3132 - if you have w7 or other, and if the driver software doesn't seem to work for the card, you will be able to get generic drivers for the sil3132 chip that is at the core of this card, direct from the silicon image web site - they are a big company in Silicon Valley, California, an important member of the sata standards committee.

This card provides you with two esata ports, and maybe you don't care about the special power over esata feature - maybe you just want to run esata devices that are a/c powered. Fine. It will do that very well, and all of them are hot-swap. Read above about safe removal which affects one of the two ports.

But if, like me, you also want to take advantage of being able to run a raw hard drive, not in any enclosure, then as mentioned, you must use the special cable that matches this card. See top of this review. It is a special esata cable, with a wide connector at the hard drive end, supplying signal+power to the hard drive. A 3.5 inch desktop drive uses 5 volts for the controller board, and 12 volts for the spindle motor. You can see a picture of what the cable looks like below this product, under "people also looked at" but I suggest you pull up, here at amazon "koutech power over esata cable" and the $12 and the $17 cable will come up. (Get the $17 if you want to run regular 3.5" desktop hard drives, in addition to 2.5" laptop drives.)

This card supplies 12 volts and 5 volts, to the hard drive - but ONLY if you give it the 5 volts to send up the cable to the hard drive. The card has no way of getting 5 volts from the pci-e 1x slot - it gets only 12 volts that way. The trick is in getting the 5 volts to the card itself, so it can be passed through the cable.

There are two methods:

Either: 1. from your unused motherboard 10-pin usb header - with this card they supply a usb connector cable for that purpose, or 2. from a 4-pin floppy power connector.

1. If you use the included usb connector that comes with the card - no problem - it will easily power two raw hard drives through two of these special cables at the same time. But you may not have an available 10-pin usb motherboard header, like I did not have on my everyday desktop.

2. So you may decide it's easier to run power to the card's 4-pin floppy power header. Finding floppy power in your computer case is easy - if your Power Supply does not have the little 4-pin floppy power, just pick up a molex to floppy converter cable for a couple bucks. BUT - in that case, DO NOT PURCHASE MORE THAN ONE of the special power over esata cables, because the floppy power gets current-limited through the koutech board, for some weird reason, and while you can safely power ONE hard drive, with 5 and 12 volts, you CANNOT safely power two hard drives simultaneously through the special cables, which deliver signal AND POWER.

This is in regard to power, not signal. The power is the problem, not the signal.

Regarding signal, both ports will supply esata signal - but we're talking about 5 volt power through the special cable with the wide power+signal connector. If you tried running two hard drives at the same time, and your 5 volt solution was to run floppy power to the card, as I did when I first worked with this card several years ago, you would probably experience what happened to me - both hard drives started acting up - my attempt to create a windows raid array failed, and what I didn't know was happening until I figured it out later, is that each drive began to suffer a limit on the 5 volt control circuitry amperage inside the hard drive - each drive was experiencing control board brownouts - they kept spinning - the 12 volts was fine - but the control board, with the microprocessors, was starved for amperage.

You couldn't have a worse situation! That resulted in write errors, and even worse, it resulted in permanent irreparable bad sectors. Even Western Digital Lifeguard write zeroes could not fix the two bad drives - in fact they began failing the normal Lifeguard drive tests. I RMA'd both drives back to where I had bought them, and was much wiser as a result.

Remember, this applies only to using floppy power (there is a little 4-pin header on this card that will take the 4-pin floppy connector) and then trying to run two hard drives at the same time using the special power over esata cables on each one. One hard drive is fine, I do it all the time, but not two simultaneously. BUT IF YOU ARE ABLE TO CONNECT THE SUPPLIED USB CABLE TO A 10-PIN MOTHERBOARD USB HEADER, YOU HAVE ALL THE 5 VOLT AMPERAGE YOU NEED, AND YOU CAN POWER TWO HARD DRIVES AT THE SAME TIME WITH THE SPECIAL POWER OVER ESATA CABLES.

Even after my hard drive problems, I ended up later buying two more of these cards. I know how to use them, and now you do too.

Best wishes,
Rich

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