SATA and eSATA and external chassis

[haven888]

I am shopping for a new PC, maybe going to build one myself after studying YouTube how-to videos. I read this review of the Cubitek Magic Cube

http://www.guru3d.com/article/cubite...3hdd-review/10

and am excited by the external chassis approach, since that would work well on my small desk which has a shelf where the external DVD and HDD enclosures could be placed.

But I have never used SATA or eSATA before and because of my ignorance I am confused by this section of the review:

The separate (smaller) HDD and optical drive cubes are connected with the help of lengthy braided SATA and power cables. The two SATA cables each are roughly one meter in length and the SATA power cables roughly 75 CM. As you can see we were short one set of power cables.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/cubite...-3hdd-review/4

Actually, since I am not familiar with SATA, I do not see that you were short one set of power cables. I don't even know which cables in the picture are the power cables

I would be grateful if someone could explain how the connection(s) is|are made between|among the main CPU chassis and the external DVD and HDD enclosures. How do they get their juice, and how do they get their signal.

Are the eSATA ports on the motherboard's rear I/O panel involved by any chance? Or are there SATA connectors on the main chassis?

Does each enclosure require a dedicated cable connecting it to the main enclosure? Or are the external enclosures daisy-chained?

Thanks

[dcx_badass]

Sata uses two connectors, one for power, one for data.

The review is saying that each cube needs a set of cables. So a set of data cables to run from the chassis to the hard drive cube, and a set of cables from the chassis to the optical disk cube. They were given two sets of data cables, one for each cube, but only one set of power cables so only one cube could get power so both couldn't be used.
Whether this was just an error you'll have to check. Look on the manufacturers website at what is included.

[haven888]

Thanks. Now I understand. The SATA cables have to penetrate the case shell and be hooked up inside. They don't connect to the eSATA port on the rear IO panel as I thought they might.