I am curious if there is a sata adapter which works with spring loaded pins, like pogo pins.
Maybe even magnetic.
Anybody has seen something like this?
Or anything else which is fast and easy to connect/disconnect?
Why would you ever want to risk a sudden disconnection of data to and from a hard drive? That is just begging to lose all your data to corruption.
MegaFloppaTron?
I would imagine the sata spec itself specifies the connector and pogo pins would not be allowed. Bootleg cables would of course be possible, but I don’t see any way of making that compatible with the drive end.
One could manufacture both sides of it.
One side on the HDD enclosure and a adapter cable on the other side.
Sure, but then it’s just not even sata anymore. It’s a proprietary adapter with a dismal outlook on adoption.
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I was thinking of prototyping a 3d printed case for the PC and a 3d printed HDD enclosure and connecting those via this springloaded, magnetic connector.
Just playing around in my head and see what is out there.
Not looking into pushing SATA away. Just a personal project.
something list this?
ahh I see what you mean.
I’m sure you could incorporate generic magnetic pogo pin connectors into a SATA interposer design that carries the power and signaling, but it’d be uber expensive and existing SATA connectors are already capable of hot plugging as long as the motion of the hdd is constrained.
Sounds like a cool project, but yeah I think you’re going to have to build it from more or less scratch.
Also I expect it’d be tough to find an impedance controlled and matched pogo assembly. Or at least I’m not having any luck on a bit of searching for 100 Ω differential pogos.
Yeah, think you are right.
After researching even more this looks to be unnecessary complex.
Messing with data at the high frequency of sata is probably not worth the effort on pogo pins.
Maybe someday something like this will exist but I doubt it.
Also, SATA is on the way out, the interface is just dreadful on any data array above 200 TB or so. Given that 256 TB E3.L SSDs are on the horizon…
SATA is not quite legacy but not far from it either.
I asked manufacturers and for the data rates it seems unlikely to build something like this.
There are zero insertion force SATA connectors used in hot swap disk bays, e.g. 5.25in Trayless Hot Swap Mobile Rack for 3.5in Hard Drive, TAA-Compliant.
IIUC these have a spring loaded bar that clamps down on the spring leafs at the end of insertion, rather than keeping the contact pressure for the entire process. Maybe something you can use? Would be considerably cheaper than designing your own connector, that’s for sure! 