Don't think e SATA cable is being used for data transfers for my external HDD

I recently ordered a Tango USB/ eSATA enclosure, along with an e SATA cable. The tango came last week and worked with the USB cable that was packaged with it. Today I received the e SATA cable and tried it out by itself. Got no status light indicator on the Tango enclosure so I plugged in the USB as well. I've no idea if the e SATA is transferring data to the Sager because when I look at how long it takes to read a 64GB branch of the external HDD, it takes just as long to read as with just the USB cable by itself. How do I test the operation of the eSATA? Do I need a driver?

 

oh great! I tried to call Acomdata, the makers of the Tango enclosure. they are out of business. looks like I'll be sending that thing back to Amazon ASAP and try a different enclosure. Any suggestions for one that works with e SATA? (and is STILL in business)

 

trying to muddle through until someone with knowledge about eSATA vs USB chimes in here.

I installed crystaldiskinfo which claims transfer mode is "SATA/300". I presume that means the eSATA cable currently hooked up is the method being used for data transfer to the Sager and that's not the fastest SATA version. Is that faster than USB 2.0, which is the other interface the Tango supports? Should I buy a USB 3.0 enclosure instead? The e SATA cable was just $5 so no big loss if I never use it.

 

Maximum theoretical transfer speeds of said protocols are:

USB 2.0 = 480 Mb/s
USB 3.0 = 4.8 Gb/s
eSATA = depends on generation, but same as internal SATA transfer rates (1.5Gb/s, 3.0Gb/s, or 6.0Gb/s).

So yes, that revision you listed is faster than USB 2.0. Which you should purchase is only relevant as far as the type of drive you get; solid state or HDD. Buying a USB 3.0 or eSATA 3.0+ drive doesn't make much sense with a HDD, since you will not see those speeds due to mechanical drives being limited by their RPM. But if you went with a solid state, then you could go with either interface and see some nice performance from your external.

 

ah. thanks for that explanation. sounds like using my old 7200 RPM HDD in that enclosure will easily wring out it's max performance then, correct? and if I go to the trouble to return the Tango for a USB 3.0 enclosure I'd not really need (due to the drive) that little bit of increase in transfer rate, correct?

 

As mentioned, with a disk drive, I doubt you'd notice the difference between USB2, USB3, or eSATA.

 

Pretty much! Such is the stigma of platter drives.

Enter the SSD, stage left.

 

I must say my Sager is much more responsive since I installed the SSD. Shutdown isn't much different, but boot-up and opening apps is WAAAY faster.