eSATA
The number of
eSATA connectors on the external panel of the controller. .
eSATA is a specialized interface for connecting external storage devices, mainly hard drives. Some time ago, it was quite popular, as it provided good speed (up to 2.4 Gbps — 5 times higher than USB 2.0) and at the same time left free USB ports that might be needed for other peripherals. However, nowadays, eSATA connectors and devices for them are gradually falling into disuse, being replaced by more modern interfaces — both various variations of USB (including USB-C), and other standards, such as Thunderbolt.
SATA
Number of
SATA connectors provided on the controller board. In this case, we mean the connectors of the original SATA standard, and not the later SATA2 and SATA3.
Initially, the SATA standard was developed for connecting internal drives, primarily hard drives (HDDs). Specifically, the original version of this interface supports speeds up to 150 MB / s; this is quite a bit even by the standards of modern HDDs, not to mention faster solid state drives. Therefore, although a few years ago, up to 4 SATA connectors could be found in PCI controllers, nowadays, solutions with such an interface have practically fallen into disuse.
SATA 3
The number of
SATA 3 connectors provided on the controller board.
Initially, the SATA standard was developed for connecting internal drives, primarily hard drives (HDDs). And SATA 3 is the most modern and fastest version of this interface: it provides data transfer rates up to 600 MB / s (4.8 Gbps). For hard drives, this is quite enough, but for faster SSD modules, this is not enough. So although PCI controllers with such an interface can still be found on the market, there are very few of them. The number of SATA 3 connectors depends on the type of controller (see above): in expansion cards there can be only one such port, but in RAID modules there are at least 2, and more often 4.
Low profile
This feature means that the controller board has a small height; and the height in this case is how much the board protrudes above the "motherboard" in which it is installed.
Low-
profile components are mainly designed for use in compact form factors where there is no room for full-sized boards. However, nothing prevents installing such a board in a larger case.
