eSATA Rocks for External Performance

[Minerva]

Originally posted by: Slickone
If I use an enclosure that accepts SATA or PATA interface internally, but is eSATA out, if using a PATA drive I would be running slower than if using a SATA drive, correct?

Probably not. I've used the "Seriell" adapters that plug into PATA drives, have a power connector (like the one on a floppy) and SATA connector. Plugged into the motherboard (AHCI) SATA port and work perfectly.

Text

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: Slickone
If I use an enclosure that accepts SATA or PATA interface internally, but is eSATA out, if using a PATA drive I would be running slower than if using a SATA drive, correct?

The drive will generally make more of a difference than the difference between a PATA and SATA interface. So if you're comparing an old PATA drive with a new SATA drive, the SATA drive will likely be faster, and vice versa. Vast oversimplification of course, but that often applies.

Here's a benchmark for illustration -- the faster line is PATA, and the slower SATA:

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k203/Madwand0/Sata-vs-Pata-Diff-drives.png

Now, go to a really slow interface, and a fast drive can become slow. E.g. the same PATA drive in a so-so USB2 enclosure / interface (a 2.5 times difference in this case):

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k203/Madwand0/Pata-vs-USB2.png

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: TBSN
I thought that eSATA supported 'hotswapping,' in that a drive can be removed while the OS is still operating. I am very new to a lot of the gritty details of this kind of hardware, so bare with me... SO, in order for a drive to "hotswappable," both the drive and the OS (and the chipset maybe??) must support it, right? So in the above situation, there is a problem with the chipset not supporting hotswapping, or am I totally off base?

It seems that just because a SATA drive and SATA controller supports hotswaps, you don't necessarily get a "Safely Remove Drive" option. The difference seems to be how the SATA controller shows up in the Device Manager. All of my Silicon Logic PCI and PCI-E SATA controllers (SiLogic 3112 and 3132, which are stated to be "HotSwap-compliant") show up as SCSI controllers and don't offer the option to "Safely Remove the Drive".

On the other hand, the drives remove and re-install just fine.

 

[Slickone]

Originally posted by: Madwand1

Originally posted by: Slickone
If I use an enclosure that accepts SATA or PATA interface internally, but is eSATA out, if using a PATA drive I would be running slower than if using a SATA drive, correct?

The drive will generally make more of a difference than the difference between a PATA and SATA interface. So if you're comparing an old PATA drive with a new SATA drive, the SATA drive will likely be faster, and vice versa. Vast oversimplification of course, but that often applies.

Here's a benchmark for illustration -- the faster line is PATA, and the slower SATA:

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k203/Madwand0/Sata-vs-Pata-Diff-drives.png

Now, go to a really slow interface, and a fast drive can become slow. E.g. the same PATA drive in a so-so USB2 enclosure / interface (a 2.5 times difference in this case):

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k203/Madwand0/Pata-vs-USB2.png

Thanks. Is your first test both with internal drives? You dont have a way compare just as I was originally asking do you?

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: Slickone

Originally posted by: Slickone
If I use an enclosure that accepts SATA or PATA interface internally, but is eSATA out, if using a PATA drive I would be running slower than if using a SATA drive, correct?

Is your first test both with internal drives? You dont have a way compare just as I was originally asking do you?

Yes, both were internal. No, I don't have an eSATA to PATA enclosure, nor an inline SATA to PATA converter.

 

[TBSN]

What is the difference between SATA and eSATA besides the connector?

 

[Paperdoc]

I'm aware of at least two important differences between SATA and eSATA. eSATA is designed to use longer cables (makes sense for the intended use), but I don't remember the two length limits. And eSATA ALWAYS includes support for Hot Swapping, which may or may not be included in a SATA controller. So using a connection adapter to allow an eSATA enclosure to hook to an internal SATA controller will work for many things, but just might not work for a couple of funstions like hot swapping.

I think there are a couple of other differences, too. Like, the eSATA connectores have a better way to hold onto the cable plug for a secure connection.

As far as I know, all of this is in the eSATA controller. You do NOT need a special drive in the external enclosure. BUt of course the enclosure will have a special eSATA connector.

Much of the discussion reminds me of actual real-world testing results I saw last year, done by copying a full large HDD to an external enclosure, but using various interfaces. I believe USB2 was slowest, IEEE 1394a (Firewire 400) a bit faster because of less bus management overhead, eSATA certainly faster than those two, and IEEE 1394b (Firewire 800) was best at about twice as fast as USB2.

 

[TBSN]

Its strange that firewire 800 is rare on most motherboards. I believe its pretty common on mac machines, and for good reason. Firewire 400 is still plenty fast for most purposes though.

 

[firewolfsm]

What if SATA replaced USB?

Computers could have external SATA ports, they're the same size as USB anyways.

 

[TBSN]

yeah but (most) USB are powered, are SATA powered? I'm sure there are other reasons that USB is so common, but I wouldn't know the technical stuff...

 

[Slickone]

Originally posted by: Paperdoc
I'm aware of at least two important differences between SATA and eSATA. eSATA is designed to use longer cables (makes sense for the intended use), but I don't remember the two length limits. And eSATA ALWAYS includes support for Hot Swapping, which may or may not be included in a SATA controller. So using a connection adapter to allow an eSATA enclosure to hook to an internal SATA controller will work for many things, but just might not work for a couple of funstions like hot swapping.

I think there are a couple of other differences, too. Like, the eSATA connectores have a better way to hold onto the cable plug for a secure connection.

As far as I know, all of this is in the eSATA controller. You do NOT need a special drive in the external enclosure. BUt of course the enclosure will have a special eSATA connector.

Maybe a dumb question, but only the newly released expensive boards that advertise eSATA have those features, right? I think this would mean the difference in buying an eSATA card vs. just a passthrough backplate with an eSATA port. Are there any 939 boards with eSATA?

 

[TBSN]

Good Question... bump..

 

[MeStinkBAD]

Originally posted by: TBSN
Its strange that firewire 800 is rare on most motherboards. I believe its pretty common on mac machines, and for good reason. Firewire 400 is still plenty fast for most purposes though.

FireWire 800 is about as fast as eSata. I can get transfer rates of about 50MB/sec for a single drive. A stripped RAID array should do even better... possibly 80-90MB/sec. I don't know. I'll try sometime.

 

[corkyg]

Unusual to see such an old thread dredged up. I would expect that from 1394b, but not many have it.

This past week I had occasion to the exact same chore with the exact same drives (eSATA external cloned to PATA internal with Acronis True Image.

Using the USB connection, the job took 10 minutes. With the eSATA link, it took exactly 5 minutes. Those are real world results - conditions, tasks for both exactly the same.

 

[themisfit610]

A serious issue with using FireWire / USB for video editing is the number of channels that are allowed.

Even if you RAID up 3-4 drives on a FireWire800 bus, you still have a maximum transfer rate of 800mbit, which though it sounds high is simply not enough for capturing uncompressed 1080p. For this you need multiple channels, with a total bandwidth of ~ 1500mbit. This is impossible without multiple FireWire / USB busses, and even with these it's flaky.

eSATA on the other hand has the lovely one driver per channel serial design. 3-4 drives in RAID 0 can handle 1500mbit until they nearly fill up (at which point of course they slow down a lot due to fragmentation, and being on the inner tracks). This is even better once you get a real eSata controller card that has 4 multilane connectors (4 drives with a max 300mbit of bandwidth each, for a total of 16 drives). This is an x8 PCIe card that can do 2x RAID 5, striped into RAID 0. Oh yes.

*wipes drool off chin

~MiSfit

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: corkyg
eSATA spec is about 1500 - F/W is 400. With the difference of drive speeds, a 5X improvement is not out of line.

Try it and see for yourself.

1394 would be ~50MB/s then, which is faster than the slowest hdd in your setup which would be the laptop hdd. i am really wondering why the 1394 setup or even usb 2 setups wouldn't give you similar results since you are far under their max speeds with the laptop hdds. are you saying in your first post that transfering 40-50GB takes 55min via 1394/usb2 but only 10 via esata w/ acronis 10? if that is the case i need to move up to acronis 10 because i don't get those speeds on my 15k hdds going to a 500GB sata via GbE connection on the backup server. what compressoin settings are you using? and just so you guys don't jump on my about my lan being messed up, when i do a straight transfer through windows sharing i get ~40-50MB/s which is probably pretty close the hdds write speed considering it is near full and always defragged.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: bob4432
what compressoin settings are you using? and just so you guys don't jump on my about my lan being messed up, when i do a straight transfer through windows sharing i get ~40-50MB/s which is probably pretty close the hdds write speed considering it is near full and always defragged.

1. No Compression. 2. I never clone from within Windows - always the TI Bootable CD. 3. The 2.5" HDDs are all Seagate 160 PRT's @ 5400. The eSATA is a Seagate Barracuda 160. 4. I always optimize fully with Raxco Perfect Disk 8 before cloning. And, then after cloning, an off-line defrag to get the system files in the right place.

5. None of the drives arer more than 40% filled.

I don't deal in dingfarbs per second, etc. - simply the time it take to do the job - which I do every week. This is purely empirical data - where the rubber meets the road.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I've never used esata although my machine has a port for it. I have used usb 2.0 and firewire to move files to my external seagate 300gb hd and the firewire is considerably faster. I moved around 70gb of data in just a few minutes the other day and was surprised at the speed at which the files transfered. Actually they seemed to move faster over the firewire than when I move them internally from one sata drive to another. If esata is noticably faster than this then I'm very interested in it.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Puffnstuff
I've never used esata although my machine has a port for it. I have used usb 2.0 and firewire to move files to my external seagate 300gb hd and the firewire is considerably faster. I moved around 70gb of data in just a few minutes the other day and was surprised at the speed at which the files transfered. Actually they seemed to move faster over the firewire than when I move them internally from one sata drive to another. If esata is noticably faster than this then I'm very interested in it.

esata=sata in terms of speed

 

[AlucardX]

usb2.0 vs firewire 400/800 vs eSATA

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2027098,00.asp

eSATA wins. however firewire 800 has virtually no CPU utilization

 

[Paperdoc]

Originally posted by: Slickone

Originally posted by: Paperdoc

Maybe a dumb question, but only the newly released expensive boards that advertise eSATA have those features, right? I think this would mean the difference in buying an eSATA card vs. just a passthrough backplate with an eSATA port. Are there any 939 boards with eSATA?

I have a Silicon Image eSATA port built into my ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe mobo with 939 socket and an Athlon64 X2 4400 CPU. Have hooked to that eSATA port an AZIO external case (also has USB2 available) containing a Seagate 500GB SATAII HDD. Working great.