ExpressCard and eSATA on a Laptop

[mikedehaan]

Concerning eSATA and SATA, I'm having an issue with some hardware I just bought.

Laptop eSATA ExpressCard:
BT-ECES2

NexStar 3 External Harddrive Enclosure (eSATA and USB 2.0):
NST-360SU-BK

I hooked up my new hardware only to find that it didn't work. The ExpressCard was recognized and installed properly, but the moment I plugged the drive enclosure in, my system froze.

I verified that I had the drive installed properly in the enclosure by using the USB 2.0 interface instead of the eSATA. No problem.

At this point, I was convinced that something was wrong between the eSATA of the drive enclosure and the eSATA of the ExpressCard. So I bypassed the eSATA portion of the drive enclosure by hooking up an external power source to my harddrive and directly connecting the harddrive into the ExpressCard. This worked, but quite messy (pieces everywhere). Not an ideal solution.

Any suggestions? I looked for ExpressCards that were just SATA and not eSATA, but found a lot of discrepancies with advertisements (text says SATA but picture says eSATA, etc).

Would someone with a working example of a Laptop, ExpressCard, and a SATA harddrive enclosure mind telling me what hardware they used (brand, model number, etc)?

Thanks,

-Mike De Haan
[/quote]

 

[bmoss]

I am researching the same topic. So far all I can find is this link to user reviews at NewEgg. There are 9 reviews for the BT-ECES2.

I have a Thinkpad T60 with an ExpressCard54 slot. I am considering the SIIG SC-SAE612-S1 SATA II ExpressCard 54 and the Seagate FreeAgent Pro 500GB eSATA/USB/Firewire.

Both these cards use the Silicon Image Sil 3132 chip. Silicon Image provided technical data and samples to the Linux community resulting in a SATA driver for this chip. My laptop is dual booted for Windows XP and Fedora Core 6 so I am interested in how this combination will work under both OS's.

 

[mikedehaan]

As an update to this topic:

I have been emailing tech support for the NexStar 3 harddrive enclosure about my problem. The first thing they suggested to do was to set the jumper on the harddrive to limit the performance to SATA 1. This resolved my problem.

I'm waiting to hear back from tech support regarding the next steps to get the enclosure working as advertised.

The ExpressCard works great, in my opinion. Just like a USB thumbdrive, the device can be "Safely Removed" by clicking the icon in the tray. If I hookup the ExpressCard directly to the drive, I get SATA 2 performance with no problem.

So Far:

BT-ECES2 (ExpressCard) <- Good
NST-360SU-BK (Nexstar 3) <- Bad

-Mike De Haan

 

[Zepper]

Except perhaps for burst transfer rates, the drive is the limiting factor on transfer rates. No drive can yet exceed SATA 1 speed in real-world applications, so don't worry about whether your external enclosure supports SATA 2. You wouldn't see any significant performance increase if it did.

.bh.

 

[mikedehaan]

Agreed, but I bought this harddrive enclosure so I could put in the drive of my choice. Right now, I may not have a drive capable of SATA 2 speeds, but I chose this enclosure so it could support those speeds.

Is there another limiting factor aside from the harddrive that would limit the transfer rates to SATA 1? I believed that I bought SATA 2 equipment.

-Mike De Haan

 

[Zepper]

The mechanics of 7200 rpm hard drives don't allow more than about 80MB/sec now. Only the Seagate 15k5 SCSI (w/ perpendicular recording) breaks 100MB/sec on the outer tracks at around 125MB/sec. I'm not sure if any electromechanical drive will make it over 150MB/sec. At least not in a time frame that would be significant to me. Toms Hardware recently tested all the Seagate 7200.10 drives (perp. recording) which should theoretically have the fastest transfer rates. The WD 400 tops out a bit over 60MB/sec, the 10k rpm Raptor around 90MB/sec. and the 7200.10s are tapped out at 80MB/sec.

. So unless another major breakthru comes along in bit density, 7200 rpm drives will be stuck in the under 100MB/sec rut for a good long while. Now you can go to RAID-0 and bump that a bit if you want.

.bh.

 

[corkyg]

I'm waiting patiently for a laptop with an eSATA port that doesn't have to use a PCMCIA or Exporess add on card. That's where my EVDO connection card goes!