the present invention is directed to an apparatus capable of dual porting a serial advanced technology attachment disk drive in a fault tolerant communication system , such as fibre channel . the dual porting apparatus includes two idle regenerators coupled to two serial master devices , a synchronization logic capable of synchronizing the communications between one of the idle regenerators and a third idle regenerator coupled to the sata disk drive . furthermore the dual porting apparatus may include an auto detector capable of enabling either of the first two idle regenerators , thus effectively switching between the two .