Laptop with eSata?

[Davej]

Anyone using a laptop with eSata? I am beginning to think that is what
I want.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Description=laptop+esata

 

[Fishface]

Anyone using a laptop with eSata? I am beginning to think that is what
I want.

How about USB 3 instead? It has the speed you need and you probably
don't need no stinkin' ACPI crap...

 

[Paul]

How about USB 3 instead? It has the speed you need and you probably
don't need no stinkin' ACPI crap...

I think you mean AHCI.

If he uses an add-in card (ExpressCard etc), the chip in there
will have its own driver and the driver can be AHCI without
affecting the rest of the laptop. (AHCI supports hotplug, so the
drive can be disconnected or connected hot, gets detected and so on.)
Many laptops shipping today, are set to AHCI mode for the Southbridge
as the default. My laptop is that way, and it's a low end model.

*******

There is little difference between SATA and ESATA electrically.
ESATA has a slightly different electrical spec, which helps it
support a longer cable. The Southbridge on some chipsets, supports
both standards on the same port (and doesn't even appear to have
a config bit to distinguish between them that I could see). So in
some cases, it would appear they're one in the same port. The port
just uses ESATA voltage levels at all times, even when talking
to internal disks.

Because ESATA is an external connector, they use a different connector
for it. The ESATA connector is unique, in that it is made of metal
and can withstand 5000 plug/unplug cycles. If someone substitutes
a desktop style SATA plug, those are only rated for around 50 cycles.
Early in the life of ESATA, some products shipped with SATA faceplate
plugs instead of the proper ESATA ones. The proper ESATA ones will
give a much longer life.

An external drive needs a source of power. If your external drive
has its own power adapter, then you have nothing to worry about.

2.5" drives run from 5V. A source of power could be a wall adapter,
but the necessary power could also be "bus power". In the case of a
USB external 2.5" drive, the bus power comes from the VCC and GND
pins of the USB cable.

3.5" drives run from 5V and 12V. You're more likely to find packaged
with your drive enclosure, an adapter for the purpose.

To further complicate matters, they also make a combination external port,
which apparently still isn't covered by standards. The intention is to
provide a source of power, such that there is less of a need for an adapter.

http://www.hitechreview.com/uploads/2009/05/msi-power-esata-11.jpg

That increases the number of cable types you might find, and also the
number of external drive packages you might find.

This page shows the pinout of the connectors.

http://www.addonics.com/technologies/euhp.php

On a laptop, there is a good chance, that no matter whether the ESATAP
is on the body of the laptop, or is added via an ExpressCard, there won't be
a source of +12V (the pins on the "ears" are missing). In such a case, if
you want to run a 3.5" ESATA drive with a laptop, nothing has really changed
with respect to the situation. Before ESATAP, your external 3.5" drive
provided its own power, and in this laptop case, it would still be providing
its own power.

If you had ESATAP on a laptop, that would offer +5V to run a 2.5" drive, in
the same way that a USB enclosure for a 2.5" drive relies on bus power.

Vanilla ESATA has no power on it.

ESATAP can have 5V or 12V, where in a laptop case, it would appear "too hard"
for them to offer 12V. If you have a desktop computer, and it had ESATAP,
that's more likely to have 12V and run 3.5" drives without an adapter.

If you use 2.5" ESATA drives, with ESATAP connectors, then that's more likely
to work with everything.

All of this stuff isn't a big deal, just something to keep in mind when
shopping for cards and enclosed disks.

*******

USB3 is also a viable alternative for external drives. USB3 uses a different
connector than USB2, since the USB3 section uses the same flavor of high speed
interconnect as is used on SATA and PCI Express (low amplitude differential).

USB3 includes 5V bus power, making it a natural for 2.5" drives.

There are undoubtedly connector options for USB3 as well (I'm sure someone
has managed to deviate the spec by now )

USB3 enclosure chips have managed up to 200MB/sec transfer rates, which
is more than enough to cover the sustained rate of any conventional
rotating hard drive. My best drive here is around 125MB/sec sustained,
and there are a few drives that do around 135MB/sec. Those numbers are
too high for USB2, but no problem for USB3. And SATA I handles the 125MB/sec
pretty well, with the SATA II being needed if you wanted to see the 135MB/sec
delivered or not.

*******

I'm not sure that ESATA handles more than SATA II rates. (My search engines
aren't helping me here.)

Paul

 

[Davej]

I use an eSATA II expresscard made by SIIG connected to a Kingwin enclosure
housing a Seagate 3.5" hard drive.  All works as advertized, but I use it so seldom
that I forgot that I had it!

*TimDaniels*

Did you ever benchmark the transfer rates? I was reading a review of a
similar eSata card and the rate was only slightly faster than USB2, so
it was vastly slower than true SATA.

 

[Davej]

"Davej" asked:


Nope, I never did.  To do so, I'd have to duplicate the setup using USB2.
And since I use it just for archiving partition clones, small speed differences
don't matter to me.  When I decided to go with eSATA for the external hard
drive I was hoping that I'd be able to boot a clone from it, but it turned out
that it wasn't possible.

*TimDaniels*

Well, when you copy a large file don't you get an idea of the
approximate MBytes/sec rate being provided by eSata? I agree that I
never see a real-world rate approach the theoretical spec rate.
Thanks.

 

[Davej]

I think you mean AHCI.

If he uses an add-in card (ExpressCard etc), the chip in there
will have its own driver and the driver can be AHCI without
affecting the rest of the laptop. (AHCI supports hotplug, so the
drive can be disconnected or connected hot, gets detected and so on.)
Many laptops shipping today, are set to AHCI mode for the Southbridge
as the default. My laptop is that way, and it's a low end model.

*******

There is little difference between SATA and ESATA electrically.
ESATA has a slightly different electrical spec, which helps it
support a longer cable. The Southbridge on some chipsets, supports
both standards on the same port (and doesn't even appear to have
a config bit to distinguish between them that I could see). So in
some cases, it would appear they're one in the same port. The port
just uses ESATA voltage levels at all times, even when talking
to internal disks.

Because ESATA is an external connector, they use a different connector
for it. The ESATA connector is unique, in that it is made of metal
and can withstand 5000 plug/unplug cycles. If someone substitutes
a desktop style SATA plug, those are only rated for around 50 cycles.
Early in the life of ESATA, some products shipped with SATA faceplate
plugs instead of the proper ESATA ones. The proper ESATA ones will
give a much longer life.

An external drive needs a source of power. If your external drive
has its own power adapter, then you have nothing to worry about.

2.5" drives run from 5V. A source of power could be a wall adapter,
but the necessary power could also be "bus power". In the case of a
USB external 2.5" drive, the bus power comes from the VCC and GND
pins of the USB cable.

3.5" drives run from 5V and 12V. You're more likely to find packaged
with your drive enclosure, an adapter for the purpose.

To further complicate matters, they also make a combination external port,
which apparently still isn't covered by standards. The intention is to
provide a source of power, such that there is less of a need for an adapter.

http://www.hitechreview.com/uploads/2009/05/msi-power-esata-11.jpg

That increases the number of cable types you might find, and also the
number of external drive packages you might find.

This page shows the pinout of the connectors.

http://www.addonics.com/technologies/euhp.php

On a laptop, there is a good chance, that no matter whether the ESATAP
is on the body of the laptop, or is added via an ExpressCard, there won'tbe
a source of +12V (the pins on the "ears" are missing). In such a case, if
you want to run a 3.5" ESATA drive with a laptop, nothing has really changed
with respect to the situation. Before ESATAP, your external 3.5" drive
provided its own power, and in this laptop case, it would still be providing
its own power.

If you had ESATAP on a laptop, that would offer +5V to run a 2.5" drive, in
the same way that a USB enclosure for a 2.5" drive relies on bus power.

Vanilla ESATA has no power on it.

ESATAP can have 5V or 12V, where in a laptop case, it would appear "too hard"
for them to offer 12V. If you have a desktop computer, and it had ESATAP,
that's more likely to have 12V and run 3.5" drives without an adapter.

If you use 2.5" ESATA drives, with ESATAP connectors, then that's more likely
to work with everything.

All of this stuff isn't a big deal, just something to keep in mind when
shopping for cards and enclosed disks.

*******

USB3 is also a viable alternative for external drives. USB3 uses a different
connector than USB2, since the USB3 section uses the same flavor of high speed
interconnect as is used on SATA and PCI Express (low amplitude differential).

USB3 includes 5V bus power, making it a natural for 2.5" drives.

There are undoubtedly connector options for USB3 as well (I'm sure someone
has managed to deviate the spec by now )

USB3 enclosure chips have managed up to 200MB/sec transfer rates, which
is more than enough to cover the sustained rate of any conventional
rotating hard drive. My best drive here is around 125MB/sec sustained,
and there are a few drives that do around 135MB/sec. Those numbers are
too high for USB2, but no problem for USB3. And SATA I handles the 125MB/sec
pretty well, with the SATA II being needed if you wanted to see the 135MB/sec
delivered or not.

*******

I'm not sure that ESATA handles more than SATA II rates. (My search engines
aren't helping me here.)

    Paul

Paul you are always a fountain of knowledge. I had purchased an eSata
external case a few months back but it is still sitting unused on my
shelf;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...le-_-External+Enclosure-_-Rosewill-_-17173042

The question is this -- on an old laptop such as a Dell D6xx do you
think an add-on eSata adapter would noticeably outperform USB2 or
would various factors make the speed difference insignificant? Thanks.

 

[Paul]

Well, when you copy a large file don't you get an idea of the
approximate MBytes/sec rate being provided by eSata? I agree that I
never see a real-world rate approach the theoretical spec rate.
Thanks.

You can use HDTune for measuring performance. The free version
operates read-only so nothing is touched.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

This picture, shows my 500GB hard drive, in SATA I mode (jumpered)
versus SATA II mode (jumper removed), just to give some idea
how you'd use the tool. Operating at SATA I rates, clips the
max speed of the drive for around the first 23% of its capacity
(23%, starting from outside edge of rotating platter). The other
77% of the platter surface has slow enough reads, that the bus
standard used no longer matters for sustained performance.

http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/842/500gb3500418ascomposite.gif

You can use the results, to detect whether an intervening bus
is limiting performance. And without the nuisance of stop watches
and timed copying.

Paul

 

[Paul]

Paul you are always a fountain of knowledge. I had purchased an eSata
external case a few months back but it is still sitting unused on my
shelf;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...le-_-External+Enclosure-_-Rosewill-_-17173042

The question is this -- on an old laptop such as a Dell D6xx do you
think an add-on eSata adapter would noticeably outperform USB2 or
would various factors make the speed difference insignificant? Thanks.

According to this, The Dell D600 is Cardbus ? Can you buy Cardbus to
ESATA ?

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/latd600/en/ug/specs.htm

OK, this one uses a SIL3112 chip. Which presumably has a PCI interface
and can be made to work with CardBus. And one person reports 41MB/sec
transfer rate (lower than it should be). This one has SATA connectors
(and comes with a red colored SATA cable, like a desktop would use
for an internal drive). So this would have a 50 insertion cycle
limit on the connectors (if you get more than 50, good luck to you).
You'd need a SATA to ESATA adapter cable, for this to work with
your enclosure.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124012

This one has ESATA connectors, and fits the PCMCIA slot. Only
one review, and the reviewer mentions "lockups" on Windows 7.
So we don't know much about this one (no benchmarks).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16839158030

According to the StarTech product page, the chip is SIL3512.

http://ca.startech.com/Cards-Adapte...bus-PCMCIA-PC-Controller-Adapter-Card~CBESAT2

The SIL3512 is a SATA I chip with a max 150MB/sec SATA transfer rate.
In my testing, that standard will pass 125MB/sec max roughly (when
overheads are taken into account). But the thing is, the
Cardbus can't do more than 133MB/sec burst, and if there
are any internal bottlenecks (CardBus bridge limit inside
laptop), that could account for much crappier numbers. Just
like some PCI bus implementations suck. The worst PCI bus
ever made, could only do 25MB/sec! (AMD chipset).

(SIL3512 details)
http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?pid=29

So both those adapters are effectively SIL3112 based. The
SIL3512 is a "re-baked" SIL3112. Not sure what improvements
were made, but it wasn't bumped to SATA II 300MB/sec or anything.
Both of them are SATA I.

If you've already got the enclosure, with its own power source,
then this is not an "expensive experiment", but it could
turn out to be a "disappointing experiment", depending on
the behavior of your particular CardBus. You'd need to know
more about your CardBus bridge, to have some idea, and
the driver situation for that thing is a bit strange
(may be hard to figure out what Cardbus bridge is in there).

CPU -- Northbridge -- Southbridge
|
| PCI bus (133MB/sec on desktops)
|
Cardbus Bridge ??? Bottleneck ???
|
SIL3512 on CardBus
|
ESATA limited to SATA I speed
(be prepared to use Force150 jumper
on the hard drive, if it has problems)

Performance = CardBus bridge limit ???

The Startech card is $29 right now, so shouldn't break the bank.
Your enclosure came with an ESATA cable, so you're even spared
that expense.

Report your benchmarks when you get it

Have fun,
Paul

 

[Flasherly]

Well, when you copy a large file don't you get an idea of the
approximate MBytes/sec rate being provided by eSata?

Should be the same as the internal drive structure running off MB SATA
ports, theoretically, on a well implemented and designed MB. Just
looking at Thermaltake case now advertised on newegg half off. It's
blurring ESATA distinctions with ESATA by incorporating the enclosure
into a top, slide-drawer as an integral part to the case. Tempting if
it takes off (like I really need another, at least, decent case), as
there may be worthwhile clones of it from other makes at yet half that
advertised price. Something of an issue possibly as I prefer one
system to lay on its side, which would require a reinforced insertion
point to hold a drive securer on that axis. It's been awhile since I
bought anything apart from the two external drive enclosures I have,
but strewn wires and wallwarts always do invariably become tediously
out of fashion, which is partially why I've only $19 invested between
the two. Either the Thermaltake design or an an add-on internal 5-1/4
device might nicely duplicate a speedier ESATA alternative to USB2,
especially at the write-out to device for speedier & ergonomic
alternatives to a viable economical, massive platter & bulk storage
considerations likely to be around for awhile.