eSATA on VPC-Z (and S/Y series) - an eSATA ExpressCard Review

Hey folks,

since some of you might be thinking about how to improve data rates with your external hard drives – eSATA is the perfect interface for you.

How?
Since only the bigger Vaio E and F models have eSATA equipped and the smaller Vaio series lack eSATA interfaces, we can help out ourselves with an ExpressCard to eSATA controller.

Why?
Compared to USB 2.0 which can only transfer about 30 MB/s, eSATA connects an external drive directly through the SATA interface and will not bottleneck your performance any more. Theoretically, eSATA can transfer up to 3 Gbit/s, the ExpressCard itself 2 Gbit/s (0.48 Gbit/s for USB 2.0). So, eSATA could theoretically be up to 5 times as fast as USB 2.0.

There are several of those controllers, available as ExpressCard 34 (34mm) and ExpressCard 54 (54mm) modules supporting up to two eSATA ports.



Physicals / Card Package:
Most of those slide-in-cards do stick around 2cm out of the computer, plus additional 3cm of the eSATA cable jack. Since I do not like those sticking out cards, I searched for more compact ones and found two cards, offering one eSATA port each, fitting cleanly inside the slot and not sticking out far like other cards.

The Cards are:

• AKE BC338 (JMicron JMB360)
• Delock 61748 (Silicon Image SiI 3531)

Prices are between 10 and 20 bucks, the Delock seems to be a bit more expensive than the AKE. I ordered the Delock from a local retailer, I found the AKE only in eBay as a China import.





Both support SATA II specification, up to 3 Gbit/s, SATA Port-Multiplier (multiple SATA devices at one port), Legacy and Native Command Queuing (LCQ and NCQ) as well as Hot Plug. All common OSes (Windows since 2000, 32 and 64bit, Linux since Kernel 2.6 and Mac OSX) are supported.

How do the cards fit in a Vaio VPC-Z?
Unfortunately, the cards to not completely slide into the Z’s ExpressCard slot. The reason for that is, that on one hand the slot is a bit too short; on the other hand the outer shape of the Z’s side is a little bit curved. In total, the card sticks out about 3mm (side of the case); seen from the top, about 1mm over the aluminium plate (see pictures). Note: in other laptops, like the Apple MacBookPro 17”, the cards fit completely inside.



With the eSATA and a USB jack attached to the Z for comparing the size, it’s quite safe regarding accidental unplugging or passing strangers pulling your laptop off the table or breaking connectors. In addition to that, the card can reside inside the slot while travelling – just plug and forget.



Build Quality:
Both devices feel and look solid and well-built. The Delock’s eSATA housing (the plastic frame around the connector) is just a tiny bit loose. Nothing serious, the connector itself, which is looking like a piece of PCB is working reliably, however it looks just a bit cheaper than the AKE’s. On the other side, AKE’s ExpressCard did not fit in the slot of the Z. It turned out that I had to flatten the sheeted metal enclosure of the card a bit in order to make it slide in. I just crimped the piece of metal with pliers tighter to the connector and it worked. Seems to be I have faced some tolerance issues with either the card or with the Z’s slot.

Features / Performance:
Both cards work quite nicely on my Z. I have a Samsung EcoGreen F2 HD154UI connected through a Revoltec Alu Guard 3.5 enclosure (great device btw). Both cards show all features in HD Tune and max out the drive (about 80 MB/s avg in sequential read speed).



AKE:
The AKE card is working well on my Win 7 x64 machine without driver installation, but is not recognized when inserting the card into the running system (no hot plug). Neither it is after installation of the most recent drivers from JMicron's website. The card came with an 8cm CD with totally outdated drivers. AKE does not provide a website for driver download or support – at least I did not find anything like that. Since hot plug is not working for me (might also be another issue with e.g. the drivers), I had to go into sleep mode in order to make the card be recognized. Even then, hot plug of the drive to the eSATA port randomly did not work either, so another sleep mode and wakeup was needed. Kind of annoying, but when everything was properly recognized, the drive worked perfectly and fast.



Delock:
For the Delock card with the Silicon Image chipset, you need to install the drivers first. You can download them from the Delock website or directly from Silicon Image. I suggest latter, since those drivers are updated more often than the Delock site. Both provide a package with the raw drivers without containing any bloatware or unnecessary autorun apps or tray icons – that’s the way I like. If you think the same way about lightweight driver packages, forget about the included Delock driver CD (it installs some kind of useless RAID tool which shows an ugly splash on system bootup). The hot plug feature of both - card and drive - worked perfectly – that’s how it’s meant to be. The performance of the card was good. In Win 7 x64, it was about 5 MB/s slower than the AKE card, in Win XP 32bit, it was even a bit faster than the AKE card (I will figure out wether the reason for that is driver-related…).

Win 7 x64:


Win XP x86:


Conclusion:
If you want to speed up your backups or data transfers to your external storage, eSATA is an inexpensive way to do so. If you do not have an eSATA capable drive enclosure yet, they cost about 40 bucks. With this investment, dramatically increased speeds compared to USB 2.0 make you ready for the future. As you won’t buy new external drives with less than 1TB anymore, at least I don't want to be stuck at 30 MB/s when transferring large files.
If you spend 10-20 bucks on a slim eSATA card, you get a cheap and efficient interface expansion for your Vaio. Both tested cards work for what they are made for; unfortunately, with the AKE card you will probably face some hot plug issues. The Delock card works without flaws after installing the proper drivers but the connector feels cheaper than the AKE’s.
Altogether, I recommend the Delock card, since its overall performance is better and it is working great out-of-the box. If you want to save money, you plan to have the card in the laptop all the time and the sleep mode trick does not bother you, go for the AKE.

 

some details i also discovered about the expresscard34 slot

it is limited by being pci-express x1 so theoretical max throughput is 2.5 gigbits

so right there you won't get USB 3.0 max 5 gigbits or esataII 3 gigabits

however theoretical limits are never reached due to overhead, and real world max speeds are usually half

so the max real world throughput of the pci-express is 1.25 gigbits or roughly 150 MB (megabytes) per second

it should still be fast enough to utilize 10,000rpm drives or external SSD like OCZ Enyo (expensive!)

good luck! personally i am going with USB 3.0 expresscards since they provide 2 connections even though they require power from 1 USB2 slot

 

@pyr0,

I already bought my expresscard eSata adapter a few weeks ago. Now I wish I had waited (mine has two eSata ports and protrudes out of the laptop). Excellent information. Rep added.

 

I am curious what is acutally the maximum speed of the cards. For now, it seems that they are able to keep up with current drives. I may get in touch with some faster HDD's like the velociraptors in 2-3 weeks - I will test if the cards will bottleneck then.

@JP$: Perhaps you can add your experience with your card and what card you are using, too. I think the sticking-out box of the bigger cards do only contain connector stuff. Electronics inside should be the same as the slim cards. So perhaps we can break down the cards to the chips used for bridging ExpressCard-eSATA and figure out the best.

I found some other interesting slim cards:

• Syba Slim ExpressCard 1x eSATA, JMicron JMB360 Notes: identical to the AKE? Also available labeled as OWC card.
  
  Link: Syba Web
  
  
• Sonnet Tempo SATA Edge ExpressCard/34, Controller unknown, Notes: Manufacturer not providing drivers for Windows, Windows users shall download drivers through automatic Windows driver installation wizard.
  
  Link: Sonnet - Tempo SATA Edge ExpressCard/34: Compact 1-Port Serial ATA Host Controller; Compatible In MacBook Pro and Windows NoteBooks With ExpressCard Slot

There are many others where the eSATA ports are provided through this protruding bulge outside the computer JP$ described. Beside the common Silicon Image and JMicron chipsets, there are some cards (like the Sonnet Tempo SATA Pro, 2 ports) featuring a Marvell controller that seem to be even faster than the SiI and JMB chips. We'll have to investigate that in the future.

There are mostly Mac-related reviews and card comparisons, since Apple also removed eSATA ports from their newer laptops, e.g. this: Macintosh Performance Guide: Reviews ? MacBook Pro eSATA ? Introduction
Oddly enough, there the JMB360 chip card won the comparison, since it is bootable! and very fast in a MBP, while I had some issues with that. Perhaps I got a lemon... Will figure that out.

 

Yeah, I just got the AKE card (wish I had read this first, but then again, it was only $11), and it seems to be working (I need an eSata cable first, to test it out). Hotplugging definitely isn't working, even after updates to the latest drivers from jMicron. I'll report back if I get it working with an attached drive (like whether you can boot from that drive).

 

I purchased my expresscard adapter from a local Best Buy for about $13. Here is an Amazon link to the adapter: Amazon.com: Dynex® - 2-Port eSATA II ExpressCard Adapter DX-ESATL: Electronics.

My transfer rate (when copying large files from the computer to my external or vice versa) using the eSata adapter seems to be about 20MB/s on average. Via USB 2.0, I am seeing transfer rates from as low as 6MB/s, but mostly around 10MB/s.

I really only bought this adapter because it was readily available and had native command queueing support.

 

Seems very slow to me. What external device are you running?

 

Seagate Momentus 500GB 5400 RPM drive: Walmart.com: Seagate Momentus Internal Laptop Hard Drive, 500GB 5400 RPM, SATA-300 8MB Buffer: Computers

I have it in an Acomdata Tango enclosure: Walmart.com: Acomdata Tango USB 2.0/eSATA 2.5-Inch SATA Hard Drive Enclosure TNGXXXUSE-BLU (Blue): Computers.

Any thoughts?

 

Very odd. You should max out at least USB 2.0 (~30 MB/s). Your enclosure also does only support 1.5 GBit (SATA Rev. I), I could not find out what chipset is used in that device. Maybe you can find out in the device manager.
If I were you, I would try another enclosure, it smells like yours is crappy - you can get faster speeds with a 5 bucks usb flashdrive or SD card...

 

What's a good way to test transfer speed? Just copy a 1GB file to the external via eSata?

 

Thats one method; or you could use HDTune. Thats what theyve been using to compare their SSD speeds.

 

Thanks, I might download HDTune and give it a try.

 

Hi guys,

I downloaded HDTune and ran the benchmark. My external via eSata had an average transfer rate of 41.5MB and a burst rate of 31MB/s. Prognosis negative? Or does that sound about right?

Edit:

OMG, I just ran this on my three year old Dell Inspiron and got an average transfer rate of 32.8MB/s, and the transfer rate was way less stable than on the external. And even more OMG (though I'd seen this before in other posts), my Vaio Z with its snappy SSD was over ten times faster than the external (average of 492.7MB/s).

Now I have to figure out what the hell is going on with my Dell...

 

That sounds kinda right but should be faster a little bit. Try enable write back cache on the drive and test again if it is getting faster. I would expect it to have avg speeds in the mid-50s. Nevermind. What is the min/max speed? How is the speed with USB?

 

I used Intel Rapid Storage Technology to turn on the write back cache for my Z's RAID 0 array, but how do I turn on the write back cache for the external?

I'm at work so I don't have the numbers in front of me, but there was very little oscillation during the benchmark on the external. I want to say it bottomed out in the mid 30s and maxed in the high 40s over eSata, but was mostly right at about 40-45 most of the way. USB min for the external was low 20s and max was high 20s.

This contrasted a great deal with my Dell's HDD, which had massive oscillation. The average was lower than the external, but the max was low 50s I think and the min was something like 18. That probably means in real world usage that the Dell HDD will feel slower than the external, because the worst case reads will make themselvs felt.

 

Go in the device manager and see the write back cache option in the external drive's preferences.

 

I'll give it a try tonight or tomorrow.

 

pyro,

did you write that review yourself?

It is very detailed and helpful.

Thank you very much if you were the one who went through all that trouble!

 

Yeah I first bought the cheap AKE card and was kinda disappointed since it does not have the hot plug feature as advertised. So I got myself the Delock (looked for another chip than the JMicron, so the Silicon Image was worth another try) - I am happy with that. It brings a great performance boost over USB and works perfectly the same regarding hot plug capabilities.

After I fiddled around much with that eSATA stuff, I decided to share my experiences.

 

Just to get this straight - theoretically due to expresscard34 slot's max transfer, neither USB3 or esataII will reach their max speeds. So there is no real advantage of going one route versus the other right? Besides that a USB card will have 2 slot instead of one. But at the same time, USB3 cards cost about 2x as much as an esataII right? (~$40).

Will there be any other benefits to using USB3 over esata? Since USB is a much more universal port, what other uses will it have outside of storage transfer?

I ask because I'm not exactly in a rush to get either but I know I will need one in the future. I'm not sure if I want to get an esata now or just wait it out for when USB3 gets a little more popular. Also, does anyone know of a card (USB or Esata) that will sit completely flush into the Z? I will be leaving it in there at all times and don't mind paying extra....

 

If I were you, I would go for one of the eSATA cards mentioned. They can reside in the laptop when travelling. I have mine also always plugged in w/o problems.

 

AKE is the cheapest flush card available on the market (under $12 at eBay.com). There are other JMicron-based cards available in US, but the prices start from about $20.

I am looking to purchase a card that is bootable (don't care about hot swappable too much as you'll have to reboot anyway in order to boot from the volume located on HDD/SSD connected to eSATA.

Does anybody know which one out of all cards in this thread is bootable on Z? Which one is bootable and hot-swappable (if there is a beast like this)?

Actually, does Vaio VPCZ12 support boot from cards/devices installed on ExpressCard/34 slot at all?

 

There is no card being bootable with the Z and most likely, there never will be one. The Z can't even boot off the SD card.

Nope.


If you want hot-swappable card, take a card with the Silicon Image chipset.

 

Sad

Well, at least there is a variety of controllers to choose from.. I found one more siliconimage-based, but is based on SIL3132 chipset:

 

I've researched a little bit. It seems that the Dawicontrol DC-300 eCard has good performance (costs around 50EUROs). Of course you can buy it only in Germany/Europe (Dawicontrol is a German company). What do you think pyr0? Since you are closer at the source.

 

Why is that card better? It has the SiI3132 chipset and 2 bulge ports. You can get the same chip in a flush fit card with one port cheaper.

 

Hi,

I'm new to this forum.
I've googled and found this thread discussing about eSata Express card.

I've just bought Esata Express Card, and I'm having slow transfer problem.

I'm using a syba express card eSata, it's using silicon image 3132.

The problem is when I used in my laptop HP 6930 Vista, the transfer rate is slow, around 15 MB/s, the same if I use USB.
But if I used other laptop ACER windows 7, the transfer rate is high around 50 MB/s, as for USB only 15 MB/s.

Does any one could give me advice on what I should do?
I've googled enough for almost 2 days without luck

 

I have just got one of these cards and with a Seagate 7200rpm 500gb drive seeing about 65mb/sec read and 60mb/sec write which is not too far off the 90mb/sec I saw when I had a HP Envy with USB 3.0

One disappointment is that it requires usb power as well but not sure if this is a caddy issue?

 

thanks for sharing your experience with all of us. I just bought an ake card because it was so cheap on dealextreme around 12$ with free shipping ^_^. Looking forward to finally put my external esata enclosure to some us.

 

Can anyone confirm if esata carries power?

 

Mine does not. I too have to use USB to power the drive.

 

I'm wondering if it's because the throughput of the HP's expresscard slot is limited, e.g. it's not connected via a PCI port, unlike the Acer's. I'm not sure it's a driver problem, I don't think it's an OS issue. If it's an on-board hardware limitation, then I guess there's pretty much nothing we can do about it...

I've seen on this forum a couple of people testing to see what sort of interface the express slot uses, though I can't seem to remember which thread...

 

As far as I know esata does not carry power, you need to power your drive externally.
And according to wikipedia:

"For small form-factor devices (such as external 2.5-inch disks), a PC-hosted USB or FireWire link supplies sufficient power to operate the device. Where a PC-hosted port is concerned, eSATA connectors cannot supply power, and would therefore be more cumbersome to use. Note that this problem has been solved by the introduction of eSATAp.[16] Some e-sata ports double as eSATA/USB."

 

I doubt that this could be a hardware issue. Since the card actually works, it is clear that it is connected properly through the pci-e x1 bus. I would advise try other drivers / mod inf files if needed and give feedback (driver version, benchmark e.g. HD Tune etc.).

 

I don't know much about expresscards, but from here: ExpressCard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, it looks like it has two modes: a USB mode and a PCI-E mode. Looks like either the laptop is stuck in USB mode, or it only has that mode.

================================================

I am now a deity! Kneel, kneel all ye lowly humans, kneel to the turkey! Hahaha! Ahem...

As one of the privileges accorded to my station, I have my very own religious text. That's right, I call it, "The Gooble Goobledegook Text". And now I shall read from the third chapter, verse six, sentence two:

"And even though we live in times of turmoil, we must never neglect nor harm the turkeys living amongst us. Yea, keep them well-fed, and they shall bring blessings upon us all."

Gooble gooble.

 

You are right, ExpressCard features both PCIe and USB capabilities. But the chips inside those cards do not connect through the USB interface, only through PCIe. I read that in the datasheets of the Silicon Image and JMicron chips.
Because of that, it is clear that if the card actually works, the connection through the PCIe bus is working properly, too.

 

The 7 e-sata pins are GND/TX-/TX+/GND/RX+/RX-/GND. THe combo ports that come on some notebooks have e-sata+USB, with special cables that draw power from the USB component. These AKE cards definitely do not provide that.

 

Guys, what would you think of this product here:
Express eSATA II SATA Port x1 Express Card 34mm Mac on eBay (end time 14-Nov-10 14:45:37 GMT)
Has anyone tried/used it, if so what was the performance like?
The description seems to be pretty much detailed, but still, I'd like to hear about from someone's experience who had a chance to work with that card

 

Iti is a litttle bit expensive, but I can recommend that card. It has the Silicon Image chip on board so it will be exactly the same card like the delock I reviewed (clone, another sticker). In terms of functionality, this is the best flush fit card I know.

 

Yeah I've been trying to find a slim power over eSATA expresscard but I don't think they exist.

You can get eSATA/USB combo expresscards which supply power like this one but its not slim. Its got that big plastic thing that juts out which means the (rather inflexible) eSATA cable juts out even further.

 

Thanks for the answer, pyr0, just ordered it, will see how it performs soon...

 

Any recommendations for an USA based online retailer for such card? Thanks!

 

I just ordered an Iomega 1TB eGo BlackBelt USB 3.0 / 2.0 on special from Dell. I am looking to buy an express card for my Z 1190.

usb3express.com: USB 3.0 ExpressCard for Laptops

Will this work? will it be less than ideal as it looks like it will stick out a bunch .. is there a better solution? also it says it comes with a power cord... what is that for? I thought that the USB devices were powered thru the port?

Thx

 

I ordered a flush USB 3.0 express34 card and it works perfect, 100% flush with my notebook so I can just leave it there. Only drawback is that it only has one port, which is understandable considering it doesnt stick out

 

I asked for the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex with eSata for Christmas because I had the DV6 with a USB/eSata combo connector. Problem is, the DV6 is gone. I can use the GoFlex with USB, but might as well take advantage of the eSata assuming I get it (I did send some revisions to my parents once I knew the DV6 was going back ).

Anyway, the problem is that it is a portable drive, no power connection, so has to be able to draw power through eSata. I know eSata is not traditionally powered, but my understanding was because on the DV6 it was eSata/USB (USB being powered) it was able to draw power.

I suspect my only option will be a splitter cable for eSata and USB... or to just get the USB3 cable for the GoFlex and get a USB3 expansion card. Though that will probably be cost prohibitive- I think the USB3 cable might be $40 or so, add on an expansion card and I am spending a pretty penny for a non essential speed increase. EDIT: Only $20, maybe worth it

 

Which one did u buy?

 

Hi all,
This is a bit off topic as I have bought AKE USB 3.0 Express card 34.
I bought it from Amazon for about $16 and I got WD USB 3.0 1TB external drive as well.
However, I am facing some random crashes and reboots with AKE express card.
I installed the driver from CD it came with, I believe its driver is Fresco Logic xHCI (USB3) controller FL1000 series.

I have only two USB 3.0 devices, one 16GB Super Talent USB 3.0 stick and WD passport USB 3.0 1TB external drive.

Only thing confusing me is that when it works, it works.
Ok here is second problem(?) or issue. The transfer speed starts super fast at like between 320~250mb then it degrades down to about 60~70mb.
Is this normal behavior?

Is there anyone out there with same AKE USB 3.0 express card 34 who can help me to solve this random crash/reboot behavior?

I am wondering if this is a driver related issue and have been looking for AKE websites or download page but I didn't find anything.

Help~

 

When you look at the USB transfer speed in Windows7 or Vista, it will start like crazy high because it's buffered in Windows cache. In reality, 60-70 mb/s sounds right.

I have a Seagate free agent 2TB with USB 3.0 connected to a desktop. Sometimes the speed even drops below 20 MB/s. But that's when I'm bogging down my computer. I usually get around 60 MB/s.

 

I use the AKE usb3.0 card as well and I have built myself a custom driver package. You can try that as well. Make sure you have your current driver uninstalled before use (remove in software panel and delete driver in device manager) It is based on the latest Fresco Driver leaked from the OEM. With my Z it works perfectly well and I get around 110mb/s with my 1.5 TB samsung drive in a revoltec usb3.0 case (maxed out drive speed, same as via SATA in my desktop)

Driver package download (for Win7 32 and 64 bit):
http://www.multiupload.com/57MJ3S1M78

EDIT: Updated hoster.

 

Thanks for the upload.