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eSATA Hard Drives

post #1 of 11
5/20/07 at 11:10am
Thread Starter 
I guess these are relatively new, but I saw them on sale at Best Buy and decided to pick up a 500 GB Seagate Free Agent unit. It works via USB or eSATA, and I assumed that there was a PCI eSATA interface card to install in the PC-WRONG. The older Seagate models included such a card.

The drive seems to work fine on USB, but eSATA is supposed to be as fast as an internal drive.

So I went to Best Buy and CompUSA today and couldn't find an eSATA card and cable. Didn't feel like asking anyone, the stores were pretty busy.

I looked on Amazon.com, they have several, but it's not clear if they run at the full 300 Gbps or the 150 Gbps rate.

Well, for now I can use it with USB and do some research on eSATA cards.
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post #2 of 11
5/20/07 at 11:14am

Re: eSATA Hard Drives

If you have an internal connector left, you can just use one of these guys:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817121176
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post #3 of 11
5/20/07 at 11:25am

Re: eSATA Hard Drives

Assuming you have a PCIe slot available you could pick up this card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815283005

It specifically says 3.0Gbps
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post #4 of 11
5/20/07 at 12:58pm
Thread Starter 

Re: eSATA Hard Drives

OK, so an internal SATA connection will work using the adapter.
There's not a lot of practical information to be found on the web!
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post #5 of 11
5/20/07 at 1:44pm

Re: eSATA Hard Drives

The one Robert linked to will work just fine. It will work the full 3gb/s because it hooks directly up to the S-ATA 3gb/s port on your motherboard. So, it's pretty much just like hooking up a internal hard drive except it's external. And it's only $5.00!
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post #6 of 11
5/20/07 at 2:50pm
Thread Starter 

Re: eSATA Hard Drives

Quote:
Originally Posted by bobbyg2
The one Robert linked to will work just fine. It will work the full 3gb/s because it hooks directly up to the S-ATA 3gb/s port on your motherboard. So, it's pretty much just like hooking up a internal hard drive except it's external. And it's only $5.00!


Sounds good to me!
Thanks.
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post #7 of 11
5/20/07 at 5:41pm

Re: eSATA Hard Drives

It's basically just an extension cable, all it really is.
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post #8 of 11
5/27/07 at 4:23pm
Thread Starter 

Re: eSATA Hard Drives

Well, I received my cables and adapters-connected the unused SATA ports to a dual eSATA connector, connected the external eSATA cable to the computer and drive, enabled the SATA port and it works.

I did some speed comparisons copying some huge files to and from the external drive using the eSATA connection and USB. The USB wasn't that much slower!

I copied 9 files to the drive, totaling 4 gigabytes, times were:

USB connection: 2 min 47 sec
eSATA : 2 min 32 sec


I'm probably going to stick with USB since there are disadvantages using the SATA cables- if you want to use it you must boot the computer with it connected. I heard that it's supposed to be hot swappable, but maybe it's not implemented that way right now.
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post #9 of 11
5/27/07 at 7:46pm

Re: eSATA Hard Drives

I use my (eSATA capable) external hardrive/enclosure with USB 2.0, and I've never had problems with it, even watching video straight off it.
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post #10 of 11
5/28/07 at 11:41am

Re: eSATA Hard Drives

Most external drives don't push the USB2 connection beyond its limits. The theoretical max is 480mbit, which you will never see, but reaching 30+MB/sec or thereabouts should be easy, and at that point the speed of the harddrive itself begins to become an issue. A fast 7200rpm drive can output something like 65MB/sec assuming it is doing nothing else and the data is on the very outer edge of the platter.

If it is in the innermost section, output speed drops to 35MB/sec maximum. Realistically, a fast 7200rpm drive fluctuates between those two figures - and those figures are for best-case scenarios with huge files being transferred with nothing else going on. Meaning, for the most part, USB2 can keep up, and only in some cases will it be slightly saturated.

Then if we add the fact that the internal hard drive one is transferring to probably can't write all that data to itself all that fast... well, suffice it to say that in single drive scenarios the USB2 connection will be quite enough. If you were to have a multi-drive configuration in both ends then USB2 would probably be less than ideal, but how many people do?
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post #11 of 11
5/28/07 at 5:48pm
Thread Starter 

Re: eSATA Hard Drives

A lot of variables determine transfer rates, even things like the sector spacing (can't remember the correct word- might be skew) , which people used to manipulate on floppy drives in order to make the fastest possible Boot disk.
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