The Need for Speed for External Storage - eSATA’s Hurdles
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The transition to having lots of systems using eSATA won’t necessarily be smooth, however. The SATA-IO web site lists the following companies as makers of eSATA products: Accusys, Addonics, Aska Technologies, Comax Technology, Der An Electric Wire & Cable, FirmTek, Foxconn, Highly Reliable Systems, Initio, LaCie, Marvell Semiconductor, Oxford Semiconductor, Seagate, Silicon Image, and Win Win Precision Industrial. Iomega also sells eSATA drives. While this is an excellent start, it doesn’t fully defeat the chicken-and-egg problem that’s been keeping eSATA ports from becoming more widespread on computers up to now. You know the kind of issue I’m talking about: PC makers won’t add a new port if there aren’t enough devices that take advantage of that port, while sales of devices that use that particular port are based on the port itself becoming more common on PCs.
This presents a pretty clear technological hurdle. If there isn’t an eSATA port, someone who wants to use an eSATA device with their PC must open up the case and install an add-in PCI card. Many companies that make eSATA drives include such a card with their devices. Performing this minor bit of work on a PC is no obstacle for most of the people reading this article, but it’s a real barrier for the average computer user. According to Jon van Bronkhorst, executive vice president of Seagate’s branded product line, “People who want performance are usually comfortable opening the box and putting a card into the computer. Bu the mass market is not comfortable doing that and not capable of doing that. We don’t want to sell products (just) to customers who are box-crackers.”
That’s not the only hurdle that eSATA will have to overcome. The simplest is one of knowledge; many people don’t know what eSATA is. If they’ve never heard of it, obviously they don’t know what kind of advantages it can provide over other types of external connections. According to Krishna Chander, storage analyst for market researcher iSuppli, “There’s a level of education needed, and I don’t see that happening. The penetration is going to take awhile.”
The size of the market might also serve as a hindrance to adoption of the eSATA port and eSATA devices. External hard drive sales are expected to reach 3.2 million in 2007, a rise of around 50 percent. That sounds great, until you consider that PC and notebook shipments are projected to reach 255 million in 2007. Any way you do the math, the number of people who buy external hard drives for their machines will make up only a tiny fraction of the number of people expected to buy new systems.
Of course, mentioning these market considerations brings us to another significant hurdle: the price. eSATA drives cost about $50 more than comparable USB drives. For example, a 320 GB drive from Iomega costs $149 in the USB flavor and $199 in the eSATA version. The 500 GB models follow the same pattern, priced at $249 for USB and $299 for eSATA. Power users will understand that you pay more for performance, but not everybody will want to shell out the extra money, even though Iomega’s eSATA drives include a PCI card and backup software.
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