This reminds me of the e-SATA port that was also a USB port.
eSATAp. (The p is for power!)
You can add these ports to a PC. With help from the motherboard and power supply, they’ll support both USB and eSATA, including mechanical drives that need 12V power.
https://www.newegg.ca/en-labs-model-11-001-405/p/17Z-00AT-00001
With the right cable, you can plug bare drives into them, which is convenient for backups, imaging, etc.
eSATA seemed like it had potential but I can’t say I ever actually used it. I remember those ports, though. Might have a motherboard kicking around in storage with one.
I used esata back in the day and I loved it. I had a second hard drive that I could plug into my laptop with all my games on it. This was back when SSDs were $1 per GB on a good day so 120GB SSDs were typical.
And even in the early days of USB 3 external HDDs were slow. It wasn’t until uasp became a thing that they didn’t suck outside of backing up large files.
