eSATA or USB 3.0 Dock..Which is Faster?

That's because most users only have hdds for external drives, which can't even saturate sata/150.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

modern 7200 RPM hardrive are faster then SATA. my 1TB runs at 130-140MBps on the outer platter. A 2 TB drive or higher will be caped. a 3 TB 5400 RPM drive runs over 150 MBps...forgot the exact number but it was on newegg I watched it in their video.

 

Can you link?

 

it was a WD 3 TB 5400 rpm i think its in the newegg video on the site of the product. find one of the 3 TB 5400 rpm and they have videos of test speeds.

edit sorry short on time

 

There are no current notebook HDDs (even the hybrids) that can surpass the SATA/150 limit yet:

750GB Seagate Momentus XT Performance and Benchmarks

Even the top end desktop HDDs just barely break the limit:

Hitachi Deskstar 7K4000 Review | StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews

So SATA/300 will be more than sufficient and will not notice any benefit if you scale up to SATA/600 or USB 3.0, since the limiting factor is the HDD itself.

 

well tried to find it on newegg and they appear to not offer any 5400rpm hardrive for 3TB anymore lol. Anyways SATA speeds are hit or maxed out by a 2TB or greater drive.

@ sgo the hybrid drives actually tend to be slower for sequential reads/writes.

 

if the notebook doesn't have esata you can always use adapters like expresscard to usb3.0 or esata. or even usb3.0 to esata.

you can even get external enclosures with both usb3.0 and esata.

 

This is what I ended up doing and I gotta say I'm pretty happy with the results. Best one-cable eSATA solution and even beats some of the crappy eSATA enclosures on the market.

22-pin powered eSATA-to-2.5" SATA cable:



2.5" HDD case with cable port hole:

 

that wont get hot?

 

It's not really any different than being inside a computer case. If anything its probably cooler than what it would be inside your computer considering the heat from the other components (cpu/gpu/battery/mobo/etc.) isn't there. But since you brought it up, I'll run a test today and see how hot it actually gets.

 

i always thought in my laptop the drives got too hot hence why i got a cooler and drilled holes in it lol. One sits next to my gpu and gets really hot the other runs cool

 

you can always mod another enclosure and do the same thing. I really don't feel comfortable throwing my HDD into a piece of fragile plastic. I like aluminium.

the problem when comparing esata with usb3.0 is that there are many implementations of the 2 standards. there are usb3.0 sata II and sata III enclosures as well as many different usb3.0 chipsets. the same happens with esata.

 

Here are the temperature readings from playing a movie and doing a few disk read/write benchmarks from my plastic enclosure. I regret not doing a large file transfer as that would've stressed the hdd even more but I think its save to say that heat is not an issue:


Hitachi 7K500-500_Custom Plastic Enclosure by davidc646, on Flickr

My original plan was to mod a cheap Vantec enclosure but I liked the enclosure so much that I gave it to my brother as a gift!

Aluminium won't be any better unless there's a rubber, foam, or any other type of damper that would absorb most of the impact if severely dropped (I don't know of any that do). The force of the impact will just be transferred to the hdd considering most are bolted to the enclosure anyways unless there's also some kind of preventative measure such as an accelerometer to detect the hdd falling and stop the platters/read heads from further damage (again, I don't know of any that support this).

The case I suggested is great for backup storage that stays at home all the time (exactly what I use it for). If you're careful enough I don't see why you couldn't take it with you either. HDDs are pretty resilient but of course with enough abuse any piece of electronics will become damaged. I mean it is a mechanical device with a platter spinning at several thousand revolutions per minute so its in your best interest to make sure you're not dropping it accidentally or on purpose.

 

yea those temps are good.

Newegg.com - Rosewill RX-358 V2 BLK (Black) 3.5" SATA to USB & eSATA Ext. Enclosure w/Int.80mm fan

this is one of the ones i use. I got a newer one that is eSATA and usb 3.0 but haven't used it because i am still waiting for prices of drives to go lower.

The external drive is nice and has a fan the temp on it is 27C Sturdy too. It was also sold on zipzoomfly under another brand and was only 20 bucks but saw that after i bought it :/

 

beware: Internal Interface SATA I/II

I was unable to find any 2.5" enclosure with SATA III to esata & usb3.0 yet

 

yea sorry i didn't say that...its an old enclosure. i got it like 2 years ago lol. You'll probably have to get a 3.5 inch enclosure. Those have SATA3 and eSATA and usb 3.0 they run like 60 bucks though