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Hardware Forum / Storage / General Topics / February 2009Moving External USB Drive to ESATA Case?
Hi Folks: I recently purchased a Maxtor 1 GB Onetouch with a USB and Firewire interface. The price was right, $100.00. The salesman suggested ESATA, for a lot more money, but I'd never heard of that standard and decided to go cheap. I've since read a bit about ESATA, the interface is 3 times faster than USB that this drive has. I don't know if that means this drive would be 3 times faster if it had an ESATA interface. Do you think it would be worth moving the drive to a case that with an ESATA interface? My motherboard has a three SATA connectors that aren't being used. Gigabyte offers a "SATA Bracket", which I assume is a physical interface to an ESATA cable. Or is this a drive tuned to the modest performance of the USB interface? Thanks Larry > I recently purchased a Maxtor 1 GB Onetouch with a USB > and Firewire interface. The price was right, $100.00. > The salesman suggested ESATA, for a lot more money, > but I'd never heard of that standard and decided to go cheap. > I've since read a bit about ESATA, the interface is 3 times faster > than USB that this drive has. I don't know if that means this > drive would be 3 times faster if it had an ESATA interface. No it doesnt. You might be able to pick the speed difference with some tasks in a proper double blind trial, but only with some stuff like say moving 50GB of files from your PVR etc to it etc. > Do you think it would be worth moving the drive to a case that with an ESATA interface? Really depends on what you use the drive for. > My motherboard has a three SATA connectors that > aren't being used. Gigabyte offers a "SATA Bracket", > which I assume is a physical interface to an ESATA cable. Correct. > Or is this a drive tuned to the modest performance of the USB interface? Nope, but the real difference in thruput is nothing like the 3 times difference in the interface speed. > > I recently purchased a Maxtor 1 GB Onetouch with a USB > > and Firewire interface. The price was right, $100.00. [quoted text clipped - 21 lines] > > Nope, but the real difference in thruput is nothing like the 3 times difference in the interface speed. Thanks Rod: This drive would be for external backup. I'm running Shadowperfect on XP home, and will be running ufsbackup/ ufsrestore on Solaris. It would be nice to trim some time off of these backups. I appreciate your assistance. Larry > Rod Speed <rod.speed....@gmail.com> wrote >>> I recently purchased a Maxtor 1 GB Onetouch with a USB >>> and Firewire interface. The price was right, $100.00. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] >>> than USB that this drive has. I don't know if that means this >>> drive would be 3 times faster if it had an ESATA interface. >> No it doesnt. You might be able to pick the speed difference with >> some tasks in a proper double blind trial, but only with some stuff >> like say moving 50GB of files from your PVR etc to it etc. >>> Do you think it would be worth moving the drive to a case that with an ESATA interface? >> Really depends on what you use the drive for. >>> My motherboard has a three SATA connectors that >>> aren't being used. Gigabyte offers a "SATA Bracket", >>> which I assume is a physical interface to an ESATA cable. >> Correct. >>> Or is this a drive tuned to the modest performance of the USB interface? >> Nope, but the real difference in thruput is nothing like the 3 times difference in the interface speed. > Thanks Rod: > This drive would be for external backup. > I'm running Shadowperfect on XP home, and will be running ufsbackup/ ufsrestore on Solaris. Never tried timing that with different drive speeds. Some backup doesnt manage to wring out the full speed of USB, others can and so would be a bit faster. BUT if you are doing the backup unattended, the difference can be academic in practice. > It would be nice to trim some time off of these backups. > I appreciate your assistance. No problem, thats what these technical groups are for. Rod Speed;938371 Wrote: > > I've since read a bit about ESATA, the interface is 3 times faster > > than USB that this drive has. I don't know if that means this [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > some tasks in a proper double blind trial, but only with some stuff > like say moving 50GB of files from your PVR etc to it etc. It actually depends on how fast that Maxtor hard disk is. USB 2.0 wil give you an absolute maximum throughput of 35 MB/s, while eSATA is onl limited by the drive's maximum transfer speed. I have two WD 1 TB My Book drives, one connected by USB and another b eSATA. The *average* read speed of the WD10EAVS eSATA drive, as measure by HD Tach, is 78.7 MB/s (with 100 MB/s maximum transfer speed on th outer edges). This is nearly three times the speed you would get fro connecting the same drive via USB > Rod Speed;938371 Wrote: >> [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > give you an absolute maximum throughput of 35 MB/s, while eSATA is > only limited by the drive's maximum transfer speed. > I have two WD 1 TB My Book drives, one connected by USB and another by > eSATA. The *average* read speed of the WD10EAVS eSATA drive, as > measured by HD Tach, is 78.7 MB/s (with 100 MB/s maximum transfer > speed on the outer edges). This is nearly three times the speed you > would get from connecting the same drive via USB. That doesnt mean you'll be able to pick it in a proper double blind trial with most real world work like say playing media files from the drive tho. And even with the backup he wants to use the drive for, if that is being done timed and unattended, the better speed is completely academic too. Rod Speed;942287 Wrote: > That doesnt mean you'll be able to pick it in a proper double blin > trial [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > being > done timed and unattended, the better speed is completely academic too. Not necessarily. I use my two external 1 TB drives for backups only and the USB version takes over 5 hours to back up 446 GB of data, vs little over 2 hours for the eSATA one. Because I work at home and at odd hours, it can happen that I wake u and get to work while a scheduled backup is still running. The faste eSATA interface minimizes the chances of that happening, plus, eve though working while the back up is taking place should not be a proble with Acronis True Image, I still prefer the backup to be over as soon a possible. That is why I use the USB drive for redundant monthly full backups an weekly differential backups, and the eSATA drive for daily backups. Also, the faster eSATA interface will allow me to be up and running i case of a catastrophic system drive failure a lot faster than the USB M Book Home Edition. The faster transfer rate will also be a hug advantage if I ever need to transfer multi-GB files in a hurry betwee systems at different locations. This said, you are right in saying that speed is not always of th essence, but it is nice to know it will be there for those occasion where it actually is. : > Hi Folks: > [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] > Thanks > Larry > Hi Folks: > [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > The salesman suggested ESATA, for a lot more money, but I'd never > heard of that standard and decided to go cheap. So just to clarify, you do or do not now currently have an existing ESATA connector on your external drive? Just asking if you're asking would it be worth your time to exchange the case or not? > I've since read a bit about ESATA, the interface is 3 times faster > than USB that this drive has. I don't know if that means this drive [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > Or is this a drive tuned to the modest performance of the USB > interface? A friend of mine has a WD MyBook with a triple interface, USB/Firewire/ESATA. There was a thread about it a couple of months back. So we were able to do test on all three types of interfaces. There was practically no difference in speed between USB or Firewire. However, ESATA was nearly twice as fast at transferring a large file as the other two. The USB or Firewires were in the 20-25 MB/s range, whereas ESATA was just under 40 MB/s (i.e. 38-39). This was also damn near as fast as the internal SATA drives, which were just over 40 MB/s. However, one of the big advantages of ESATA is that it's usually treated just like an internal SATA connection. Same OS drivers, BIOS recognizes it, etc. This also means that most SMART monitoring tools will be able to monitor the health of your external drive just as easily as it can internal drives. That should be very useful under Solaris, and somewhat useful under Windows too. However, one thing we found out was that the WD MyBook was weird and it actually didn't pass SMART info through the ESATA, but did pass it through USB. I don't know if that's going to be the case with your case, but it could. But usually ESATA would be absolutely essential for SMART monitoring. Yousuf Khan > > Hi Folks: > [quoted text clipped - 41 lines] > > Yousuf Khan Thanks Yousuf: Doubling the performance of a backup or recivery seems worthwhile. I'll look into ESATA cases tomorrow. By the way, it's a 1 TB drive, not a 1 GB drive. :) I appreciate the effort Rod and you have taken to help me. Larry >> > Hi Folks: >> [quoted text clipped - 56 lines] > > I appreciate the effort Rod and you have taken to help me. Its not as simple as plugging it in. You have to install the proper drivers and configure the SATA interface for AHDI mode instead of IDE emulation mode if you ever want that pseudo eSATA port to be hot swappable. Otherwise, youll have to shutdown every time you want to unplug the drive or plug it in lest you want data loss. > >> ESATA > >> was just under 40 MB/s (i.e. 38-39). This was also damn near as fast as > >> the internal SATA drives, which were just over 40 MB/s. As far as I can determine my eSATA case has a straight through connection from the external connection to 1TB drive, and likewise from mobo skt to eSATA bracket, so it seems to be 1 to 1 from mobo to drive. Which would make it as fast as a drive in the case connected to the mobo. As below > >> However, one of the big advantages of ESATA is that it's usually > >> treated > >> just like an internal SATA connection. > In article <5b3e5773-e93f-4719-8f5e-6c96d1f7e...@f3g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>, Larry Lindstrom <larryl_tu...@hotmail.com> wrote: > [quoted text clipped - 64 lines] > have to shutdown every time you want to unplug the drive or plug it in lest > you want data loss. Thanks GMAN: I'll check out Gigabyte drivers. Larry Yousuf Khan;939277 Wrote: > However, one thing we found out was that the > WD MyBook was weird and it actually didn't pass SMART info through th [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > the case with your case, but it could. But usually ESATA would be > absolutely essential for SMART monitoring. I actually replied to that thread not so long ago. :) You were right, the WD My Books use an Oxford Semi chipset controlle for the USB, Firewire and eSATA bridges. Turns out that chipset also ha a built in RAID controller (check out the diagram in page 3 of th datasheet you can find 'HERE (http://usbbridges.googlepages.com/Oxford_OXUF924DSA_Datasheet.pdf) which is put to good use in the My Book Mirror series. I believe this i the reason why SMART data is not being passed through: instead of direct connection when using the eSATA bridge, you get a logical volum even though the RAID controler is handling a single drive. This would also explain why the name of the drive changes from WD10EAV (actual drive model) in Device Manager when connected by USB to 'WD M Book' when connected by eSATA > Yousuf Khan;939277 Wrote: >> However, one thing we found out was that the [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] >> the case with your case, but it could. But usually ESATA would be >> absolutely essential for SMART monitoring. > I actually replied to that thread not so long ago. :) > You were right, the WD My Books use an Oxford Semi chipset controller > for the USB, Firewire and eSATA bridges. Turns out that chipset also has [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > direct connection when using the eSATA bridge, you get a logical volume > even though the RAID controler is handling a single drive. That would indeed explain things. > This would also explain why the name of the drive changes from WD10EAVS > (actual drive model) in Device Manager when connected by USB to 'WD My > Book' when connected by eSATA. Indeed. Seems it is cheaper to have just one chip that does it all and then not use some of its capabiliies in some devices. Arno > You were right, the WD My Books use an Oxford Semi chipset controller > for the USB, Firewire and eSATA bridges. Turns out that chipset also has [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > direct connection when using the eSATA bridge, you get a logical volume > even though the RAID controler is handling a single drive. According to that manual, the controller usually has two SATA interfaces for two drives, but the second SATA interface can be configured to emulate a fake drive so that it can be used as a host- facing eSATA interface. So with the host-facing SATA and the two existing Firewire and USB interface, you got yourself the aforementioned triple-host interface. It also explains why you can't coax any SMART data off of the eSATA, it's because all of the data sent through the eSATA is faked. Yousuf Khan bbbl67;942777 Wrote: > According to that manual, the controller usually has two SATA > interfaces for two drives, but the second SATA interface can be [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > coax any SMART data off of the eSATA, it's because all of the data > sent through the eSATA is faked. What I'm curious about is: couldn't this be solved with a firmwar update to support SMART data passthrough? I sent an email to Oxford Semi, but, of course (sigh), received n answer. Western Digital first line of support, OTOH, replied asking m to contact WD headquarters, as they had no idea. <grin > What I'm curious about is: couldn't this be solved with a firmware > update to support SMART data passthrough? I don't think there's enough demand for it. Or I guess they assume you're more likely to be using it in USB mode. > I sent an email to Oxford Semi, but, of course (sigh), received no > answer. Western Digital first line of support, OTOH, replied asking me > to contact WD headquarters, as they had no idea. <grin> Good old tech support. |
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