eSata VERY slow

hello there,

i am kinda disappointed right now, and maybe some of you can help out - that would be fab!

i just got a verbatim 1TB external esata hard disk, which i connected to the powered esata port of my E6420.

so now i am transfering rather big files (around 1gb per file) from the internal ssd to the verbatim disk, and all i got is about 10mb/s speed, which is half of what i was used to using usb 2.0. i find this unacceptable! there is no firmware update available from verbatim...

some details: windows 7 64bit pro, verbatim external hdd: 1tb, ntfs, connected via powered esata, actual disk toshiba mk1059gsm.

the write cache is disabled, but that was the case with my usb hdds as well - and they were way faster anyway. i have to disable it since it's an external mobile hdd and i need it hot pluggable.

matthias

PS: a little more info: drive is 2,5", 5400 rpm, power from esata port sufficient

 

Did you install the latest drivers for the E6420? I've had an esata port have horrible speeds until I updated and installed the latest drivers and then it was blazing fast. It might be the chipset drivers you'll need to install.

 

well, my OTHER esata drive (lacie quatro 3,5" 1tb) is blazing fast. but the weirdest thing: HD tune shows around 85mb/s transfer rate foro the verbatim drive. i am puzzled.

UPDATE: ok, it seems to boil down to this. transer rates with the verbatim drive are according to expectations. around 85 mb/s in esata mode, 25 mb/s in usb2 mode (tested with hd tune). real life data transfer (windows 7) in usb2 (no caches activated) is also according to expectations, but in esata mode the drive is only fast when i activate the write cache of the drive (otherwise it's even slower than usb2), which to me for a mobile hdd is pretty unusual. as a comparison i have a 3,5" esata drive, also with writet cache disabled, that transfers fast.

anyone else owns this verbatim drive and can confirm my findings?

 

Check the removal policy for that drive in Device Manager. It may have defaulted to Quick Removal which means that each file gets sent in turn and the next one is only sent after there has been confirmation that the previous one has been safely written.

John

 

interesting thought, but i did check that, and actually the quick removal setting is best for mobile devices. and the quick removal setting does not slow down my other esata drive.

also the verbatim, even with write cache enabled, does not seem to reach transfer rates beyond 45mb/s, which is only half of what i expected.

 

While Safe Removal is preferable for safety, I would tend to use Best performance when wanting to copy large quantities of data. Did you do any performance tests with a big file (eg 500MB)? Small files have a lot more transfer overhead.

I get eSATA performance that is the same as if the drive was internal. However, I normally use a USB / eSATA combo cable that does a direct connection to the drive. That way, I know there is no other chip sitting on the line.

Have you looked inside the Verbatim unit to see if there is any interface board. I understand that it also has a USB port and needs to be able to switch between the two. This interface may be the bottleneck.

Going slightly off-topic but I recall reading a few months back that peoples' USB 3.0 drives were maxing out at around 100MB/s. I was pleasantly suprised to get a cheap USB 3.0 enclosure and test my Intel 320 SSD at nearer 200MB/s (still slower than its SATA speed but my Thinkpad 420s thinks USB 3.0 is the way forward).

John

 

John, thanks a lot for your thorough and helpful thoughts.

I did some testing with rather big files, and it maxed out at about 45 MB/s writing to the disk. That was with eSATA, HDD write cache enabled. HDD write cache disabled maxes out at 10 MB/s via eSATA, but goes "up" to 25 MB/s vis USB2.

I really need a fast external mobile 2,5" HDD with 1TB, but that proves rather difficult which I did not expect. I might return the Verbatim drive. Since the Latitude E6420 has no USB3, I think I might just have to wait, because there are not many 2,5" eSATA drives out there...

 

At that speed, I have to wonder whether the eSATA is routed through an internal USB 2.0 interface.

While ready-made external HDDs with eSATA are relatively few, there is a reasonable choice in enclosures for your own HDD. See ebay, for example. I also have a couple of cables similar to this one which makes it easy to swap HDDs and has the benefit of not using two ports. It will also work with a 1TB 2.5" HDD since it doesn't need an enclosure.

John

 

Thanks for these links. I did look into buying a case (from DeLock with power over eSATA - link), but that doesn't support drives higher than 9mm, and ALL 1TB drives right now are 12,5mm.

I don't wanna go into building it all myself. It's frankly not my cup of tea. I might just have to wait for the market to catch up with my not too demanding wishes, and be fine with my external USB2 drive till then...

 

Hello again, after some time has passed...

I just got a new drive (I returned the Verbatim Store'n'Go due to that speed problem) - this time a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1,5TB USB3.0 HDD for which I bought a Seagate eSATAp interface.

Speed is a little better than the Verbatim, but again not as expected. Maybe I am expecting too much... But I'll keep the new drive.

But I still wonder about these characteristics, since they are the same with this drive: with write cache disabled ("optimized for quick removal") eSATA maxes out at about 10MB/s whereas USB2.0 with "quick removal" is reaching the expected 25MB/s. Why is that?

Second question: with write cache enabled ("optimized for performance") the drive reaches 45MB/s which is roughly half of the speed the drive seems to reach in HD Tune. Why is that?

Thanks!