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The Serial ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) International Organization announced a new trick that will come in just a few months for the popular SATA disk drives. The organization said that thanks to a new specification aiming to eliminate a separate power connection the SATA drives would soon become smarter than ever.

The new specification is called Power Over eSATA. The new SATA-IO specification will eliminate requirement of additional power cord by providing power for a single drive directly from the host system using the power over eSATA cable.

Key benefits will be to maintain compatibility with the existing eSATA connector form factor and retain high performance at the current maximum interface transfer rate of 3Gb/s.

“Its fast transfer rate and efficient protocol makes eSATA the highest-performing external mainstream storage connection. Enhancing eSATA with power delivery will provide a new level of convenience to the designer and the end user. By eliminating the need for a separate power connection, customers can more easily expand their storage, making Serial ATA an even more attractive solution for mainstream storage applications,” said Knut Grimsrud, SATA-IO president and an Intel Fellow.

The Power Over eSATA specification was jointly created by Intel Corp., Hitachi Ltd. and other disk drive makers, along with cable assembly and laptop manufacturers, remarked Grimsrud.

He predicted that once the specification is finalized, systems manufacturers will allow external storage devices to use either an Power Over eSATA cable or traditional external power adapters. Grimsrud added that over time, the latter should be phased out.

Power Over eSATA solutions are expected to be available on the market as soon as the second half of 2008, creating new business opportunities by using either a SATA hard disk drive or a SATA Optical Drive in a portable external enclosure.