• Please use real names.

    Greetings to all who have registered to OPF and those guests taking a look around. Please use real names. Registrations with fictitious names will not be processed. REAL NAMES ONLY will be processed

    Firstname Lastname

    Register

    We are a courteous and supportive community. No need to hide behind an alia. If you have a genuine need for privacy/secrecy then let me know!
  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

Seagate External eSata

Randy Brister

New member
Seagate has 300GB eSata external which boasts transfer speeds of 5x USB2 or FW400. Fry's has them on sale for $269. The kit comes with an eSata PCI card and cable. The PCI card requires PCI 2.2 or higher. Where can I determine if I've got PCI 2.2 on any given desktop? I'm only assuming, but I would imagine Seagate will make their 400GB, 500GB and 750GB models available in this configuration as well. I have a number of their 400GB FW 400 externals and have been very happy with them. The eSata speeds are very, very exciting.

Randy
 

Nill Toulme

New member
Randy Brister said:
Seagate has 300GB eSata external which boasts transfer speeds of 5x USB2 or FW400. Fry's has them on sale for $269. The kit comes with an eSata PCI card and cable. The PCI card requires PCI 2.2 or higher. Where can I determine if I've got PCI 2.2 on any given desktop? I'm only assuming, but I would imagine Seagate will make their 400GB, 500GB and 750GB models available in this configuration as well. I have a number of their 400GB FW 400 externals and have been very happy with them. The eSata speeds are very, very exciting.
Randy
Check newegg — I think they have the 400GB version of the same drive for about the same price (but I'm not sure if it comes with the card). I think they come in 500GB flavors too — heck the 750's might be out by now.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net
 
Randy Brister said:
Seagate has 300GB eSata external which boasts transfer speeds of 5x USB2 or FW400. Fry's has them on sale for $269. The kit comes with an eSata PCI card and cable. The PCI card requires PCI 2.2 or higher. Where can I determine if I've got PCI 2.2 on any given desktop?

You will have to research the details of our exact model of motherboard. You are likely to be fine. But I cannot guarantee it.

Randy Brister said:
I'm only assuming, but I would imagine Seagate will make their 400GB, 500GB and 750GB models available in this configuration as well. I have a number of their 400GB FW 400 externals and have been very happy with them. The eSata speeds are very, very exciting.

Please be aware that since no consumer hard drive on the planet can saturate a Parallel ATA (PATA) connector, that there is no commensurate increase in performance using SATA. There is a slight performance gain from the point to point topology of SATA over PATA as there is only one device on each connector rather than a shared bus. But the moment you put your eSATA card on the PCI bus you are bogged down yet again by a shared bus. PCI-Express is a new technology that overcomes the shared bus of PCI just like SATA overcomes the shared bus of PATA.

In short, you should be fine with the card. If you are not, then take it back. Also, except in severe usage scenarios there is little to gain in performance from SATA over PATA due to limits of the performance of the drives themselves.

enjoy,

Sean
 

Randy Brister

New member
Sean,

Ummm, O.K., I'll take your word for all that, but I am talking about an external drive, and comparing speeds to an external FW or USB drive. That being the case, they're comparing the 5x speed to other external drives, not internals. So I guess my question is; is the 5x comparison to an external FW or USB drive realistic?

Randy
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Sean,

Good points.

Still could you or someone else, the kind of limits there are to the bus and cards and also the drive that writes read and fast and then the issue of moving that traffic to from the drive.

Some people find all this a PIA and don't know the difference between a PATA, SATA!

Thanks,

Asher
 

Randy Brister

New member
Sean and Asher,

Just to be sure, I don't find any of this to be a PITA, some of it is simply over my head. I didn't mean to sound flippant, I was just asking for a clarification.

Randy
 
Randy Brister said:
Sean,

Ummm, O.K., I'll take your word for all that, but I am talking about an external drive, and comparing speeds to an external FW or USB drive. That being the case, they're comparing the 5x speed to other external drives, not internals. So I guess my question is; is the 5x comparison to an external FW or USB drive realistic?

Randy

A recent review of the Thecus N2050 external eSATA drive over on Tom's Hardware contains a table showing real world external drive transfer speed for USB 2.0, 1394a (400mbs Firewire), and eSATA. For a 64k read or write, eSATA is roughly twice as fast as either USB 2.0 or Firewire 400. The eSATA burst transfer rate is just under three times the other interfaces' rates. Unfortunately the table does not list 1394b, aka Firewire 800. From the numbers shown, Firewire 800 should run at about the same real-world rate as eSATA.

The review contains a number of additinal tables showing performance of the Thecus N2050's eSATA and USB 2.0, versus the same drive model as an internal SATA drive. When using the eSATA interface, the N2050 performs between 60% and 90% as fast as the internal SATA drive, depending on the benchmark used.

Bob
 

Nill Toulme

New member
For a while I was running a pair of 400GB SATA drives in inexpensive (but fanned) external housings that just had regular SATA cables coming out of them. I just ran them right through the backplane and plugged them into open SATA ports on the mobo. The system thought they were internal drives.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net
 

Randy Brister

New member
Rob Peterson said:
A recent review of the Thecus N2050 external eSATA drive over on Tom's Hardware contains a table showing real world external drive transfer speed for USB 2.0, 1394a (400mbs Firewire), and eSATA. For a 64k read or write, eSATA is roughly twice as fast as either USB 2.0 or Firewire 400. The eSATA burst transfer rate is just under three times the other interfaces' rates. Unfortunately the table does not list 1394b, aka Firewire 800. From the numbers shown, Firewire 800 should run at about the same real-world rate as eSATA.

Bob

Thanks, Bob, or Rob, I appreciate the link. So, at least in Tom's Harware review of the Thecus N2050, the claims of 5x the speed of USB or FW400 externals simply don't hold water.

Does anyone have any experience with any other eSATA external, more specifically the Seagate?

Randy
 

Steven Sinski

Active member
i myself run 3 eSATA drives. 2 are seagate 400GB Connected all the time. then a 100GB 2.5 in a OWC combo SATA eSATA/USB2 housing so its a portable unit for travel. transferring data from one to another is quite a bit quicker then USB2 or FW400. i also have a 60GB PATA combo USB2/FW400 OWC housing.
personally i'm hoping for an eSATA Drobo rather then a FW400/800 like lots of others are clamoring for
 

Steven Sinski

Active member
For a while I was running a pair of 400GB SATA drives in inexpensive (but fanned) external housings that just had regular SATA cables coming out of them. I just ran them right through the backplane and plugged them into open SATA ports on the mobo. The system thought they were internal drives.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

did you have them set up to hot plug?
 
Top