Esata External Hard Disk Question

Hi,

First i just want to say i browsed the first few pages of this forum and have not found the answers im looking for.

I recently got a dell 1520 notebook and overall im happy with it (i have noticed a whine but i disabled the speedstep stuff in bios and its a lot quieter now and doesnt effect me too much because im plugged in most of the time).

I have noticed that the hard disk does seem to be a slight bottleneck in the system. Initially i thought about getting an external firewire drive but then stumbled across esata. I know you can get esata connectors that plug in the express card slot, one i've found is http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Laptop-Expres...ryZ31534QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I would then be looking to get a wd my book esata/usb2 drive http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...&SearchKey=All&SearchMode=All&NavigationKey=0

Now do you guys reckon that this setup will be faster than the 160GB 5400 Fujitsu drive i have in my laptop. I belive it will since:

1) the interface is Sata 2
2) the drive is 320GB (more dense than 160GB)
3) the rotational speed is 7200rpm vs 5400rpm

I'm not worried about portability because i'm not going to be using the data on the hard disk when it's not plugged in.

One concern I have is the cable, do I need a sata to esata or just esata to esata cable? It's not a big issue because i can find out when i get the disk, and use usb2.0 for the short term. It's only the ebay thing doesnt make it clear - im guessing its esata

My aim is to partition the drive into a 160GB partition for backups of the internal drive and use the rest for games/music/videos etc. Does this sound like a good idea to you lot?

 

Thanks for the link to the eSATA Expresscard. I had never found that by searching., so I've ordered one.

It looks like that card does not include any cables and neither does the WD external HDD so I think you will need a eSATA to eSATA cable such as this. I can confirm when I get the card. The SATA-eSATA cable is needed if you want to directly connect an eSATA device to the SATA socket on the motherboard of a desktop computer.

As for performance, 3.5" HDDs have an inherent speed advantage over 2.5" HDDs because the bigger diameter means the physical velocity of the disk passing under the head is higher. A higher RPM increases this advantage.

You will also find some performance boost because your internal HDD is not having to do so much work.

I'll report back when I get the card. I'll be testing it with a WD 2500BEVS 2.5" 250GB HDD in one of these enclosures.

I would also point out that transfer rates through USB 2.0 actually hit a ceiling of around 25MB/s - around half of the theoretical speed. eSATA should run at the speed of the HDD's interface.

John

 

ok sounds good - for the short term usb 2.0 is fine and depending on your findings i'll probably invest in the express card eSATA adapter.

 

Try the search function. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=108825
I tested my esata hdd vs my internal hdd and the esata was significantly faster.

Oh yeah, the external is a 3.5 7200rmp while the internal is a 5400rpm one. The idea behind eSATA is that it will run the drive just as fast as if it were an internal.

 

The eSATA express card arrived and has been tested. The socket on the card is an eSATA socket so you will need and eSATA - eSATA cable to connect to an eSATA HDD.

I attach a couple of graphs which summarise my results all for the WD2500BEVS 5400rpm 250GB 2.5" HDD.

The graph from Sandra has 4 results for the HDD: Internal, in Icy Box USB 2.0 enclosure; in the Newlink enclosure using USB 2.0 and in the Newlink enclosure using eSATA. The graph from HDTach is for the Newlink enclosure using eSATA and USB 2.0.

It can be seen that the external HDD runs as fast through the eSATA connection as it does as an internal HDD and USB 2.0 has a ceiling of around 30MB/s (according to HD Tach) or 25MB/s (according to HD Tune). Most desktop (3.52) HDDs will be faster than the WD2500BEVS but if you are transferring data between HDDs then the speed will be limited by the performance of the slower drive.

John

 

thanks for the info, will look to be getting one of these expresscards in the near future.