Struggling with eSATA

[FireFox]

A while back I bought this e-SATA II cable with the idea I could use it to connect SATA HDD's via e-SATA without the need to have an external enclosure or dock to do my backups. Now I've been trying to get this thing to work but no luck.

The two motherboards I'm trying it on is a MSI 790FX-GD70 and an ASUS P7P55D-E. During my failed efforts I googled this and followed the instructions to enable AHCI in the bois after windows 7 has been installed (OS Win 7 64 Ultimate) and on my P7P55D-E I've been able to enable AHCI but still the HDD wont show or register via e-SATA (PS the drive does work, tested it internally) but I have no luck on the MSI as when I modify the registry and change the BOIS and Win 7 boots it wouldn't boot in. I will get the logo and then it will stay there forever

So am I missing some magical incantation to get e-SATA cable working? The other problem is I don't have any other e-SATA devices present to actually test if my e-SATA is working as I've never used it before and I don't know of anyone off hand who will have one for me to borrow to test it. I was thinking of using e-SATA as my server (the MSI) is limited to USB2 which is tediously slow to do backups of when your data is more than 1TB so I thought I could use e-SATA instead. If all else fails or I'm for some reason screwed to use e-SATA I always have the option to rather get an USB3 HDD dock and connect it on my ASUS which supports USB3 and just do the backups over the LAN as most HDD's transfer rate is about what you will get over the gigabit lan (100-120 mb/s which is far better than 30mb/s I usually get on the USB2 )

Any ideas as I would rather get this cable working instead of buying a docking station (even thou they are cheap the thing is I've already spend money on this cable now) because the other backup I'm thinking of is the OS image backup which probably could be done over the network as well by setting up the docked HDD to be shared over the network Just sound like a lot of extra effort instead of just plugging in the HDD and go (but if all else fails 5 extra mouse clicks won't kill me now will it )

[Krom]

Standard eSATA ports do not supply power, the drive doesn't work on that cable because the drive is not receiving any power.

[Grendel]

Looks like an eSATAp cable -- you need a matching outlet (alt.) for that on the computer. A plain eSATA port does not carry any power at all.

[FireFox]

Great thanks for the info, should have known I was missing something when I bought it. So I'm boned using this cable as it won't work as I intented it too (the ability to work on any pc with e-sata seeing as I will need that output source unit for each pc).

Guess the best solution then is to rather invest in a propper HHD dock then. One which will have USB3 and eSATA, that way if the PC supports USB3 I can use that if it is USB2 only but have eSATA I can then use the eSATA option or worst case senario use it on the USB2 port. But I'll be able to use it no matter what the connection option will be unlike this cable.

Oh well another one to write up as learning costs.