eSATA vs USB for external SATA drives

[CSMR]

I am wondering if a USB 3.0 to eSATA adapter, such as http://www.everythingusb.com/newertech-esata-to-usb-3.0-adapter-20879.html would be useable and reliable.

Would I lose anything important, such as reliability, ability to format drives, correct spindown/up, speed?

Currently I access external SATA hard drives via eSATA. But it seems that eSATA is becoming rarer on notebooks and I so I am wondering if I should require eSATA or consider notebooks without it.

Thanks!

 

[tweakboy]

Well eSATA is going to be about as fast as your internal hard drive.

USB 3.0 is nice but bandwidth isn't there to give you the mbps of eSATA ... gl

 

[Kusnierek]

USB 3.0 has a higher theoretical bandwidth (5.0Gb/s) than eSATA at the moment until eSATA 6.0Gb/s is standardized, but that's a moot point as most SSDs and definitely all HDD's don't saturate either USB 3.0 or eSATA 6.0Gb/s yet. Besides, USB 3.0 is going to be a lot more widely adopted and useful than eSATA, I'd think, correct?

 

[corkyg]

I have, and have used for 2 years, 3 eSATA external cases (Vantec) and they perform about 5 times faster than USB 2 doing real, extensive chores like backups and cloning. USB 3 is slightly better on paper, but, I don't have USB 3 on any of my systems. My eSATAs are all optimized for hot plugging, and I only turn them on when using them. I do keep them eSATA connected but just turn their power on/off as needed. They work just fine that way.

 

[CSMR]

So speed is probably going to be fine with USB 3, but my priority is reliability. When I plug in with a SATA-USB adapter, will these things work every time? Will I get a limited range of functionality? Thanks.

 

[IGemini]

Its ability to "work every time" is dependent on the manufacturer quality which, this being a brand new product barely 2 weeks old, requires a crystal ball.

I'd guess the functionality might depend on what connection is going into the board. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to format a drive, and it looks like SMART data is transmitted by USB 3. I'm not sure if you'll get AHCI features like NCQ if connected to the board via USB 3, though. A few things you're looking for are more dependent on the board controller settings than the adapter itself, especially if connected to the board by eSATA.

 

[corkyg]

OK - I turn on my eSATA drive about 4 times a day on average, and that has been for the past two+ years. Reliability really depends more on what HDD you have inside the eSATA case. I consider my WDC drive to be very reliable.

 

[Makaveli]

USB 3.0 has a higher theoretical bandwidth (5.0Gb/s) than eSATA at the moment until eSATA 6.0Gb/s is standardized, but that's a moot point as most SSDs and definitely all HDD's don't saturate either USB 3.0 or eSATA 6.0Gb/s yet. Besides, USB 3.0 is going to be a lot more widely adopted and useful than eSATA, I'd think, correct?

Theoretical bandwidth and what you see in real world usage is usually two different things. USB 3 is not faster than eSATA.

USB 2.0 has more Theoretical Bandwidth than Firewire yet we know how that turned out.

If the drive it meant to be stationary and just for backups I prefer esata myself. If you need a drive to move around to different computers USB 3 is better.

 

[philipma1957]

Theoretical bandwidth and what you see in real world usage is usually two different things. USB 3 is not faster than eSATA.

USB 2.0 has more Theoretical Bandwidth than Firewire yet we know how that turned out.

If the drive it meant to be stationary and just for backups I prefer esata myself. If you need a drive to move around to different computers USB 3 is better.

this