T61 eSATA performance terrible

I've read about this problem before on this forum and others, but I've had no success yet. I have an eSATA controller plugged into my PCMCIA slot with an external drive plugged in. I get around 14.2 MB/s steady when I run any benchmark software. I've tried updating the BIOS twice to two different versions, but neither had any effect. I specifically bought this card so I could transfer data faster than USB, but apparently it's twice as slow. Has anybody figured out a solution to this? Thanks.

 

Why did you buy the card when you knew this problem exists? As you said it was discussed on this forum. Pascal(sp?) had a huge thread on it and I don't think there is any resolution, at least none that I am aware of. This is why I just decided to stick with plain USB 2.0

 

I’m kind of in agreement with this. When you think of all the limitations and translations required by USB, FireWire and 32-bit CardBus, most just accept USB because of its ubiquity and move on. Now if you had a built-in eSATA port that’d be another story, but USB 3.0 is around the corner too…

 

I only started looking this up after I noticed the problem on my own computer. I wouldn't have bought it if I knew it had problems beforehand. I switched to USB, and I guess the old drives I had were pretty slow, because I got ~35MB/s, which isn't that bad. Still I wish I could figure this out; I'd really like full speed though. Oh well.

 

The problem is PCMCIA.

You should have gotten an ExpressCard version, is it too late for an exchange?

The PCMCIA bus is very old and slow, the data through your PCMCIA eSATA controller still has to go through this bus and some sort of legacy bridge. Think of it as eSATA is the highway and PCMCIA is a small street.


(click to enlarge)

 

Also 35MB/s is pretty good on USB2.0 .

 

I would've gotten the ExpressCard version if I had the slot, but I don't. I almost wish I'd gotten the slot instead of the card reader... I wonder if I could still swap it out. Anyway, PCMCIA has a max speed of 133MB/s I'm pretty sure, and the controller is a brand new PNY card with a Silicon Image chip.

 

Yeah it can go up to 132 MB/s in DWord mode, but that's only in theory.

Have you tried the driver on their site? I'm not sure if it's any different or newer than the one that came with your card though.

http://www3.pny.com/support/support_landing_subcat.aspx?SectionID=1161&RootSectionID=1156&TypeID=5

 

It's not the card, it's the Ricoh PCMCIA controller chip on the motherboard. I'm trying to find drivers for it but I'm not even sure what model it is.

 

Well apparently it's Vista/Windows 7, because it goes around 60MB/s on XP. Anyone have any ideas?

 

Sorry for the repeated postings but I think I might've figured something out. I'd only been testing speeds using HDtune and HD Tach, but never actually transferring a file. When I uploaded a ~250MB file, I calculated it to be around 60-70MB/s. Maybe people are just benchmarking first without actually trying to transfer files, and not realizing it. I don't know why this would happen to only the benchmarking software, but it seems to be the case.

 

Chris, when you power up your notebook, does the BIOS detect the ESATA HDD?

 

I don't know, but in XP it performs fine. I just downloaded the newest BIOS from two days ago and updated, and one of the fixes listed was the Ricoh chip performance. Whenever I move a file in Windows 7, it starts out fast (65MB/s) but then slows down after a few seconds to around 10MB/s. Maybe it's just the OS/drivers now, but I'd stlil like to know if anybody has a fix or has drivers that actually work. I'm running 64-bit.