From the current situation, this technology is still quite meaningful. Many storage manufacturers, including Seagate, have begun to shift their focus to external hard disk products. We should know that the new external eSATA transmission technology can increase the data transmission speed to five times the existing USB 2.0 interface.

　　At CES 2006 in 2005, Seagate, the world-renowned storage giant, also showed off its latest eSATA key backup series. Seagate's 500GB eSATA key backup hard disk provides external data backup and protection at built-in speed (up to 300MB/sec interface rate), which is five times faster than existing external storage solutions such as USB 2.0 and 1394a. The 500GB eSATA hard disk will be shipped in the second quarter of 2006. In addition, some motherboards now have eSATA interfaces, including the low-cost Huajing 775XFire-eSATA motherboard.

　　 At the same time, although eSATA plays an equally important role in the field of near-line and off-line storage, it will focus on the data protection benefits of eSATA applications in PC, server, workstation and even notebook. ESATA achieves a higher level of excellent performance, high capacity, high protection and easy use for external storage schemes at an economical price.

　　It is worth mentioning that at present, there is not a large number of external hard disks using eSATA interface, and only then follow-up. In our opinion, besides the insufficient number of hosts with eSATA interface, the existing large capacity built-in hard disk products with external hard disk and PATA interface by hard disk manufacturers are also factors worth considering.

　　In other words, the popularity of eSATA external hard disk not only needs more hosts to support eSATA interface, but also depends on the further increase of market share of SATA hard disk. Objectively speaking, although some eSATA products of external hard disk (box) manufacturers have been launched for some time, it will take at least a year or two for eSATA to surpass USB and IEEE 1394 and become the preferred interface for 3.5-inch external hard disk.