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Unfortunately, the laptop I'm using only has USB 2.0 ports, which really slows down data transfer rates to this external hard drive: enter image description here Samsung Portable SSD T7 USB 3.2 1TB

Fortunately, the laptop does have an eSATAp port which is capable of very fast transfer rates. So, on Amazon, I searched for a USB C to eSata adapter.

However, none of the ads seem to acknowledge the directional aspects of what I'm trying to accomplish; it is not clear (from reading any of the product descriptions I've read) that any particular product would successfully be able to accomplish transferring data to this external SSD (shown above) from the laptop's eSata port.

I fail to assume that just because something physically plugs two things together that it will function in both directions. This reservation was confirmed, for example, in this answer I found for this product:

enter image description here

Does there exist a solution that does indeed work in reverse?

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TL;DR: I don't think what you are looking for exists; And if it does it still won't work for your Samsung drive.

USB can support communication with pretty much any device as long as that device implements the USB protocol and the host PC has a driver to go with it. There are all kinds of devices out there that connect SATA drives to USB ports by wrapping the SATA drive messages inside the USB messages. (See UASP)

SATA is an entirely different kind of data bus that is highly specialized for storage devices. The messages being sent out of the eSATA port on that laptop are in a language that USB devices don't understand or expect to receive over the wire. Also, there is no such thing like a "USB message wrapped in a SATA message", so USB clients can never be connected to a SATA port.

If an adapter like this existed it would be very complex and probably introduce a lot of opportunities for data corruption. It would have to emulate what the device on each end expects and convert the content of the messages between the two protocols.

  • It would have to act like a USB host for the hard drive's side and therefore need something like an embedded OS or special chipset to do that.
  • It would have to act like a SATA storage device for the computer's side and therefore it could only relay SATA messages to the actual storage device. That would constrain this adapter to only supporting USB drives that have UASP support.

In the end, even if the adapter did exist, you're trying to connect a drive that doesn't even use SATA! (The Samsung T7 uses NVMe storage technology)

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  • It is a fact that it uses NVMe inside, but its not like you can dismantle it easily to circumvent the USB3 conversion. So, even though there would be a ridiculous amount of conversion going on, that doesn't reduce my desire too have it utilize the fastest port on the laptop. However, I do understand the reasons (you tell) as to why such an adapter hasn't been created. Thanks.
    – Lonnie Best
    Commented Dec 17, 2021 at 13:30

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