In article , lid says...

On 3/7/19 11:27 AM, pjp wrote:
I have a couple pcs here have a dedicated Esata port on motherboard. I
also have a number of Sata hard disks just sitting unsued on a shelf.

Just run a esata to sata cable to your drive. Star Tech has them
You will need a separate power cable. I do this all the time to
transfer data from old drives to new drives.

I'm wondering if it's ok to run a standard usb cable from the Esata
connector out the back of a pc and connect it to a regular Sata drive.
I'd of course give it it's own power supply using a "special" cable I
already have.

square peg, round hole.

You could always put your drive in an external carrier
with an USB interface, then run a USB cable to a usb port
on your computer

The only external carrier I like is the Rosewill RX304-APU3-35B.
Comes with a esata cable and usb 3 cable. Has a temperature
controlled fan too

For temporary transfers, I use an adapter from Star Tech.
Comes with a power supply too. Does sata, ide, usb(3)

I have 6 or so externals and portables. I also have a cable accepts old
ide and Sata drives (and I have a stack of bare bones drives to use with
it). That cable and the spare drives is what got me thinking about the
unused port on the motherboard so I asked