Addonics unveiled their latest add-in card and this time it is an SATA host controller, more specifically an eSATA host controller. The AD4ES6GPX4 uses a single PCIe 4-lane slot and in return it provides you with 4 separate eSATA ports and a total throughput capability of up to 20 Gbps. That should be plenty of speed for a controller like this, considering that each SATA port in itself only perform up to 600 Mbps.
The Addonics eSATA host controller supports all SATA-based drives, from SSDs over optical drives to mechanical hard disks. You can also attach more than four drives when connected to port multipliers as those are fully supported by the controller chip. That means that you easily could attach four external hard disk towers to this single controller. With that in mind, there’s basically no limit to how much storage you can attach with this.
The controller supports software RAID based on your operating system, but it doesn’t come with its own hardware RAID function. The card is fully plug-and-play and will work with Windows, Mac, Linux, and most other operating systems with built-in AHCI driver. The card is a full-height PCI card which is the only downside, limiting you from the use in SFF systems with half-height slots. It is however due to the natural limitation and physical size of the four eSATA ports.
