Anyone tried an eSATA expresscard (successfully)?

[Johan Ihren <johani%johani.org@localhost>]

I'm looking for options for how to increase myagregated disk bandwidth  
in a laptop. Well, for all purposes this is a server, except that I  
got a laptop instead as I need to bring it along when travelling.  
Downside to laptop-as-server today is a noticable absence of SATA  
extra ports or other high speed / cheap disk attachments.

USB or FW400 is of course available, but way slower than the built in  
SATA disk. And then I suddenly noticed that eSATA expresscard thingies  
are beginning to appear (Belkin has one, as does someone called  
"LYCOM" as well as "SUNIX"), and that ought to be excactly what I want.

Has anyone ever tried one of these? Is there any hope of this "just  
working" because we support a bunch of SATA controllers and the rest  
is just PCI-Express?

Regards,

Johan

PS. Yes, I know that I can get PC-Card SCSI solution, but that's much  
more expensive and also precludes host-powered operation (as I know of  
no 2.5 inch SCSI disks, regardless of price). And while SCSI might  
have been the only option a few years ago, eSATA really sounds like  
the right answer today.