good to see form and function going together more often with PC gear!

This (or eSATA in general) would be a very interesting idea for a low power PicoPSU powered PC, especially a small HTPC. A 30-40GB 2.5 drive for the OS with an external eSATA drive for the media (or just the eSATA drive). Does eSATA have any provision for supplying power like USB does? Any idea if 2.5in eSATA enclosures are on the cards?

Nope, they forgot that. So if you don't want to use a brick, then you'll have to fabricate something yourself. (And hope you can find the right connector to plug into the enclosure.)

I think it is really stupid they didn't include anything about power in the eSATA specs. It wouldn't even have needed to go over the same cable. Just a few lines in the spec that tell to use a six pin mini-DIN and which voltage on which pin. Most enclosures I have seen (USB, SATA and eSATA) use a six pin mini-DIN anyway, but the pin out isn't the same between different manufacturers or sometimes even between models. If it was standardised, then we'd see the PCI-brackets come with mini-DIN sockets too.

that sucks, I guess 2.5in portable drives will be USB for the forseeable future then

You could presumably find a way to mount a 2.5" drive in one of these without a problem if you really desired to reduce noise -- it would leave room for isolation padding. The great thing about 2.5" SATA drives is that they take standard SATA power and data connections, just like the target drives for this enclosure.

Since the goal would be to mechanically isolate the drive but to connect it thermally, you could try something like the following:

Mount some L bend aluminum to make rails to suspend the drive between using rubber bands, elastic, or large o-rings. Then stick a thermal pad to the bottom of the drive, directly over the outside of the spindle bearing. Mount the drive in place, and the thermal pad will transfer heat away while still keeping it fairly isolated. A picture helps:





Maxtor's external drives use something like this, with drive screws run through big soft rubber grommets instead of isolating bands. It's also connected to the chassis with a thermal pad, and tt works fairly well. The case gets warm without transmitting significant seek noise from the 400GB Seagate in it (That's another matter -- the original drive did fail, but I believe the issue resulted from a head crash. eSATA users will have the blessing of access to SMART data to keep an eye on temperatures, whereas I'd have to pop the case and hook this one up via IDE). If more thickness is needed than a thermal pad can handle, inserting a block of aluminum between two thermal pads could work as well. Just be sure there is good contact with the housing.

I'm out of ideas for today, but I hope to keep dropping by in case I get any more good ideas from the techniques I see here

A quick search on Newegg yielded many many enclosures that are eSATA. Some for as little as ~$17!! Why exactly should we feel compelled to purchase this particular product? And I did see at least ONE that is specifically for 2.5" drives...

eSATA is the way I'll be going eventually for my main storage needs. I already have the cool and silent (although smallish) internal 2.5" SATA drive in the HTPC for the OS, a few programs, and temp storage for some media and P2P file sharing. For some real space, an eSATA enclosure that will fit two 3.5" drives with an internal power supply would be ideal. It seems eSATA cables can be fairly long so remotely locating the enclosure is very possible.