Review on 💻 StarTech.com 2-Port USB 3.1 Gen 1 and eSATA PCIe Card - High-Speed PCI Express Controller Card - 1x USB-A and 1x eSATA (PEXUSB311A1E) by Abaraham Duvernot

Yes, I had a perfectly working USB 3.0 card (that's 5 Gbps for those of you who are scoring points and a data transfer rate of 5 Gbps (625 MB/s) with 8b/10b -encoding, raw bandwidth is 500MB/s) and I took it out to put in this $52 StarTech card I bought here at Revain! So was it worth it? Just take a look. I previously bought an Orico (MSG-RC3?) which is an external enclosure for 2 mSATA drives in RAID0 with Type-C connection. I could NEVER get this to work because I believe that the power supply comes from the USB -Bus not working enough to power two SSD drives even if they are 3.3 volt and portable. For example my Intel 520 128GB mSATA consumes 600mW idle, 850mW active, twice as much, you see 1.7W or 1700mW. A USB 2.0 port is only required to provide 150 mA or 0.75 W (750 mW). A USB 3.0 port is required to provide 900mA or 4.5W to easily power these two drives. USB 3.1 goes up to 1.5A or 7.5W MINIMUM, manufacturers can and often do increase this, but for some reason only on dedicated "charging ports" and not regular USB ports. Then I looked at some of my other drives. The Samsung 851 series is in the 100mW range, but my old Kingston 64GB draws 0.11W idle, 1.55W reading and 3.18W writing. Two of them and you have over 6 watts! (Full size SSDs take a lot longer if you plug in a single external USB, FYI!) So I guess the two drives I have don't fit in this case, nor the SATA cards. When I plugged in the StarTech card, I noticed NO DIFFERENCE in the connection - Orico still doesn't work, even connected directly to the card, no hub, nothing. The front panel works the same, my phone charges at about 0.6A, can't draw more, this StarTech card has no more power than any other. StarTech, like everyone else, did what was necessary to survive. They could upgrade this card and give me something impressive for my $52, but no. I will say that Startech seems to have much better drivers than the $12 Chinese made version, the card installs easily, is recognized instantly in Windows 10 and so far there have been no errors just no power!