The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO), the
consortium that helped develop the SATA interface,has announced its Power Over
eSATA initiative, which will allow external SATA (eSATA) devices to draw on
power from their attached device.
This will eliminate the pesky power cable, usually with a
fat power adapter at the plug end. This will finally make eSATA devices
comparable to FireWire, which draw their power from the attached device. Since
the USB 2.0 spec will support the 3Gbits/sec. sustained throughput, those
external drives will be pretty quick, too.
Power Over eSATA products are expected to be available on
the market as soon as the second half of 2008.