What you are looking for is an eSATA PCI card and this will be 'plug
and go' ( with the power off whilst plugging in of course ) in any OS.

There are ones that have internal SATA ports too so that's not a
problem but the issue with eSATA is getting power to the external
drive as the port itself is just for data. There are eSATA caddies
which have separate power supplies so that's always an option.

BTW - sound like the USB isn't USB 2.0 as that would have copied
11.4Gb a lot faster ( could be the port on the system or the caddy
that's not USB 2.0 ).

Why don't you look on newegg.com or Tiger Direct? (If you're in North America)
For example:
www.newegg.ca/.../....aspx\
rd-_-16-132-007-_-Product

Oddly, Linux users gave it a higher rating than Windows users!

I have looked at both of those. Those are my two favorite PC online stores. They
have boards that match my needs but I found none that are Linux compatible,
Sure, they are Windows and may be Apple compatible but I would like to get one
that the board manufacture says it is Linux compatible or fellow Linux users
have had success with. I also like to support manufactures that support us.

Virtually no hardware will ever say it's 'Linux Compatible' and
virtually all of it will work perfectly well in Linux. One could
almost think there's an 'anti-Linux cartel' going on in the hardware
world

Certainly don't expect something like a SATA PCI card to have any
issues at all

You can thank M$ if there is an anti-Linux thing going on. All they have to do
is tell they will stop surporting it, the software, hardware or what not.

To be fair to the hardware manufacturers they are in a bit of a 'catch
22' situation with Linux because there are just so many distros and
all of them are being rapidly developed. Putting 'Compatible with
Linux' lays them open to being brought to task if certain distros or
updates break that compatibility in some way. However, ignoring Linux
altogether makes it look like their hardware will *only* work with
Windows / Mac ( there are plenty of hardware makers who used to ignore
Mac compatibility too until it went i386 and OSX arrived !! ).

The plus side in all this is that most modern Linux distros have made
huge improvements in hardware compatibility and most stuff will work
'out of the box' or with the help of the on-line community can be made
to work. It has to be said though that some hardware is never going to
work with Linux of any version - mostly due to the firmware being hard
coded to use Windows API's instead of doing the work itself ( lazy
programming or just cost cutting to keep the price down ??

There's also the problem that, of the few that do put 'Compatible with
Linux', far too many of them are doing so only because they've heard
that Linux is the up-and-coming OS, but haven't taken the time to learn
anything about it and think that all they have to do is recompile their
Mac drivers on a Linux box (because MacOS is kind of Linux-ish, isn't
it? Yes, I really have had that said to me and, I'm afraid to say, I
just couldn't be bothered to try and explain why it really, really
isn't), rather than re-write them from the ground up for the Linux kernel.

And then they get all annoyed that they get complaints from Linux users
about their hardware and stop 'supporting' it.

I have learned the hard way, I'm afraid, not to trust *anything* the
manufacturers say about their hardware's Linux compatibilty (I have had
both 'Linux compatible' hardware that wasn't and most emphatically *not*
Linux compatible hardware that worked perfectly) and to research
thoroughly anything I want to buy.

There may be hundreds of distros but there is only one kernel developer, the
Linux Foundation under Linus Torvalds. The Linux kernel is where most things
happen. The Linux kernel is monolithic and proprietary blobs have been part
of it for a long time. Some distros such as Debian have begun stripping
proprietary blobs from the kernel, but the practise is not widespread. It
would be easy to add an asterisk to exclude distros that follow this
practise. May not work with Debian, etc.

Memory devices show up as drives. hybrid devices like 3G dongles that
have software needed to run in windows have to have that memory device
unmounted to work as 3G devices. Is the adapter something that has
built in software drivers for windows? You may have to switch off this
memory device to see the adapter.

I bought a WinTV USB dongle not to long ago. On the box nothing about
Linux, but the website said it was compatible. I have come to the
conclusion that if software is needed to communicate with the hardware
or is supplied for the windows system, the manufacturer will not state
it works on Linux even though Linux has the drivers for it. If the
hardware manufacturers simply stated what programs were needed for their
hardware to be useful, or needed a memory device to be turned off, all
would be good.

Let's cut to the chase. Linux users don't trust proprietary software,
so why ask the proprietary software house to produce something that
won't be used? Most problems can be traced to faulty configuration, not
the hardware. Hardware manufacturers could help by documenting settings
needed to make the hardware work with their devices. Connecting to video
devices are done with v4l software. When connecting to these devices I
have fought configuration many times with nothing wrong with the device.
Maybe some Dumbed down instructions for setting up the interfaces for
all these trouble devices, in a heading called "device troubleshooting
documents". What do you think?

Most (internally fitted) hardware is pretty universal . However external USB
connected hardware like webcams might NOT be Linux compatible.
Recently I purchased a make Creative USB Webcam,with on the box : 'works
with Linux' and indeed it does. However I know that (most) Logitech webcams
also work with Linux ,although reference is only made to M$ OSes. The
cheaper low cost webcams could be rather iffy in this respect.