e-sata slower than usb2 on g1s

was hoping to hear from someone with experience using their e-sata port on the g1s. I am experiencing extremely slow transfer rates on my 500 gb WD mybook external HD.

Transferring a 30gb file on e-sata had a calculated time of 1 hr 51 minutes. cancelled the transfer and plugged in usb to get a calculated time of 25 minutes with the same file.

installed the e-sata drivers off the drivers disc included with my g1s.

here is the e-sata cord i bought:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812191016&Tpk=12-191-016

 

Run some benchmarks with HD Tune.

http://www.hdtune.com/

Esata should have a higher average/maxium transfer rate.

 

Keep in mind e-SATA is still a fairly new architecture... whereas USB2.0 has been around for a few years... it could just be a driver issue.

 

I got 24.9 mb/s average with 12.9% cpu usage with usb 2.0

when i plug in e-sata the program loads with the error "no drives found"

plugged in e-sata i get a "Safely remove hardware" icon in my system tray. it shows up there as SATA WD SCSI DISK DEVICE

so HD Tune isnt even detecting it when plugged in e-sata

 

Sometimes Windows takes a while to atually get the transfer going causing the est. time to freak out; best way is to use a stopwatch yourself

I'm getting an esata encolsure soon, maybe it'll get here tomorrow. Hopefully this thread will still be around and I can chime in.

 

It could also be the enclosure, they are not all made equal.

 

So, you are putting your trust in the Windows progress-time-left thing?

*whistles innocently*

 

had to reinstall windows using asus recovery dvd to even get hdtune to recognize the harddrive through e-sata. ran benchmarks got roughly double the transfer rates from usb2 but with 51% cpu usage. doesnt sound too good.

can anyone that is currently using e-sata on their g1s chime in?

 

Ive had the time-left calculator tell me a file transfer(on my internal HD) would take days, literally. Then, it would speed up and take several seconds to complete. Personally, I think the transfer takes longer because it tries to calculate the time-left. I haven't tried the eSATA port yet.

 

Make sure that you run HD Tune as an Administrator (right click and select "Run as Administrator").

My e-SATA drive will start out slow (20 MB/s) but when it gets going I have seen 60-80 MB/s while connected via e-SATA.

 

Any chance of trying another esata cable? Though it struck me as strange that you needed to buy a cable in the first place. I would have thought that the MyBook would have come with a cable since it's eSATA-capable.

Also, any chance of trying it on another computer (laptop or a desktop with eSATA). It may be a chipset issue.

 

first thing i would have tried is plugging it into another computer or using a different cord in order to rule out certain variables, unfotunately i don't have another cord or another computer with an e-sata port. i've decided to bag the whole e-sata setup and just use usb2.0. i don't know if its the g1s drivers, mybook firmware, e-sata cord, e-sata port, or what.. but e-sata is performing too poorly on this laptop for my liking. i'm disappointed but i will just have to live with usb2

 

I Use a 2.5 enclosure with a 100g 7200rpm drive, It has usb 2.0 and esata, I have tested both with hdtune, my 2.0 gets an average of 18.7 MB/s and the Esata is only 28.5 MB/s, Not nearly as high as others have gotton but an increase is an increase,

 

I use a 3.5" enclosure with eSATA and the average I usually get is somewhere around 30 MB/s, definitely not full speed, but not bad.

 

those benchmarks are barely faster than usb 2

after reinstalling windows i got about 50 mb/s through e-sata but with 50% processor use. i would also notice windows freezing periodically when writing to the drive through e-sata. the freezing alone is enough for me to back down to usb 2.0

 

it is the drivers. The fact that eSATA is faster at all than USB2, after only being out for a few months, speaks pretty highly of how good it will be in the future. (Broader bandwidth doesn't mean anything if the software doesn't support it.)

 

Well my speeds can probably be explained by the pretty cheap enclosure I have.

 

I would say max out the performance settings on your laptop, and then try, make sure nothing is set to "Maximize battery" or anythingg of the sort.

Download the newest drivers too.

Theoretically e-Sata offers double the rate of usb 2.0 so that would be about 1600 Mb/s.

Realsitcally a number of factors actually affect it so if you get around 100-200 Mb/s on your e-Sata than that is pretty damn good. Otherwise it is probably being caused by your enclosure or your cable.

 

no it is 1600 Mb/s

of course what you are thinking of is the theoretical maximum of 200 MB/s, realistically it is about 100 MB/s

the capital letter makes a big difference, about an 800 percent difference =P

 

What captial letter are you talking about. The industry name is e-Sata.

Anyways the maximum rating given is 2400 Mb/s equal to that of the latest Sata bus, being the Sata 300 and that is at the most ideal conditions and using the best hardware both ways.

Realisiticly due to the briding that has to occur between the port and external drive ie. through an enclosure, efficiency is sevearly reduced.

Already Sata drives do not get past the 1-2 Gigabit mark in most situations, even though they are supposed to reach upto 3 Gigabits, in some cases, so externally the situation is even less favourable and actually you get a realistic transfer rate of 100 MB/s- 200 MB/s in some high end computers.

This is much better than the 25 Mb/s average of USB 2.0

 

alex was talking about Mb(megabits) vs MB(megabytes). A megabyte is 1/8th of a megabit.

Hence the maximum rating of 2400 Mb/s which is equal to 300MB/s which is where the name SATA 300 comes from.

Many people confuse the capital letters but there is a big difference, 8x to be exact.

 

Oh Ok...LOL makes sense now. I thought he was talking about the actual name e-SATA.

Ya personally I never pay attention to the MB or Mb, and I know it has been the cause of some confusion before, so sorry about that.

 

I thought it was the other way around? ie, 1 megabit is 1/8 of a megabyte?

 

That's correct, it was just a typo of the poster I think.

1MiB = 2^20 bytes = 8 x 2^20 bits
1Mib = 2^20 bits

Note that the correct units of measurement is MiB and Mib, those are the powers of 2. If you use MB and Mb there might be a confusion with 1000,000 bytes, and 1000,000 bits, respectively. In fact, the SI (standard unit system) defines the MB to 10^6 bytes, and the MiB as 2^20 bytes.

 

ah, sorry about that, I was pretty much asleep when I tried to explain it.

 

Now that I've gotten my G1S (at last), I'm struggling with this issue as well. I've tried different JMicron drivers as well as all the possible cache/speed options available through Windows but nothing has helped so far... I really need that 500gb hanging there and USB transfer rates aren't really an option :l