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

Yes of course, this is for Win7 x64.

(See the included .inf file)

Sorry I forgot to mention that. (For me it is kinda clear that most users here including me use win7 x64.)

 

[UPDATE]

I just tried pyr0's driver but while I was transferring some files (big files like 2 gigs) it crashed my Z.
Also I've checked the driver version number and what I have is more recent so I've uploaded it online.
I re-installed the driver I got on my CD and now it is functioning ok for now I think. (hope?)

Here is the LINK

@pyr0:
How are you able to get much more transfer speed? Is there anything else you did to optimize your system?
I get around anywhere between 50~80 MB depends on the express card's mood(?) I think. hehe
I am thinking to buy another express card to see if I will get better result with more expensive models ( THIS)

 

Ok another update.
It is very odd here.
When I restart the comp with express card plugged in with USB 3.0 device, it recognizes the external driver and everything is fine.
However, when I unplug the USB 3.0 device and replug it back, it doesn't recognize the device by windows anymore.

What gives?

Do I have defective product?
When I plug in the AKE express card, windows recognizes it and it says the device is working properly. However, when I plug in USB 3.0 device to the express card, it doesn't recognize it.

So I double checked to see if my USB 3.0 devices are faults or not by plugging them into the onboard USB 2.0 slots and both (external and stick) work fine.

Is there anything I can to confirm that my express card is indeed at fault? I think I will return this one and try exchanging it or just refund it and get one from more qualified manufacturer.

[UPDATE 2]

It seems that this AKE USB 3.0 is either defect or is not hot-swappable. Whenever I restart the comp, it sees my USB 3.0 external drive. However, it won't see it if I unplug it and plug it back in.
Hmm...this is driving me nuts..

[UPDATE 3]
I have re-read thru the first posting and found that AKE's eSATA express card is not hot-swappable.
So I guess the AKE USB 3.0 express card is not hot-swappable as well.

@pyr0: Is this the case? AKE USB 3.0 express card is not hot-swappable?

 

AKE eSATA is worse than its usb3.0 card. What you see is known about the AKE USB3.0 card.

Connect your drive to the card and then slide it into your computer. That works for me very well. No crashes, good speed, with my driver. Most recent driver does not mean that it is the best driver. When the card is plugged in, hot swapping of usb devices is not working. Just pull it out and push in again and you got your new device ready in 2 seconds.

Maybe your issues are related to the usb device you plug in? Did you try to use your card as usb2.0 host?

 

Thanks for the reply pyr0.
I have tried unplugging/plugging the express card as you mentioned, but it didn't work for me.

Anyways, I found a workaround though. I went into the device lists and went to Fresco Logic controller and then disabled the device and re-enabled.
Voila~ it reconnected my both USB 3.0 devices no problem.

However, I found something odd though. I am pretty sure it can be fixed if someone with more computer knowledge than I do.
I found this bit of information here. LINK

Whenever I disconnect my USB 3.0 devices, it seems the driver makes the controller to go offline. However the problem is, when you reconnect your USB 3.0 to AKE express card, driver doesn't turn back on the USB 3.0 host contoller! (thus why it needs disablling/reenabling trick to reconnect)

If you go run "msinfo32.exe" in win 7, you can get to the system information as I linked above.
As you can see that under "System Drivers" and look at the first line (flxhcic), its "Start-mode" is set to "manual", "Accept Pause" is set to "NO", and "Accept Stop" is set to "YES".

I am wondering if someone can edit "flxhcic.sys" file so that "Start Mode" gets set to "Auto" and make the "Accept Pause" set to "YES" and these edition might make the AKE express card hot-swappable?

pyr0, can you edit this and make a fix to the driver file?
It would be awesome if you can make this fix!

I am purely guessing but this might be the same situation for your eSATA too!

What do you think?

 

I ordered an AKE USB 3.0 card and I cannot get it to plug into the Express slot. I've tried wiggling it around, a small amount of force from corner to corner to try and pop it in but it doesn't make the connection. Has anybody else had this issue?

 

Yes I did. Use a fine clamp and press the sheeted metal on the edges of the connectors a little bit togehter (gently). My card's metal casing came off from the plastic expresscard connector just a tiny bit and it was impossible to slide the card into the slot. The little bit crooked connector was fixed by that as well. Hope that helps.

 

Thanks for the quick response pyr0! I hadn't even noticed where the metal met the plastic wasn't flush (slightly bowed in the center), that fixed the problem right away.

 

Pyr0 have you tried this USB 3.0 card? And I was hoping that someone with an AKE card could give me its length. This card measures 7.5cm long
Express USB3.0 PCMCIA Card 1port Adapter - eBay (item 230566927475 end time Feb-23-11 06:38:01 PST)

 

My AKE 3.0 is just shy of 3", about half a 1/16" less. So about 7.54cm.

 

Why are you asking? Expresscard is standardized in size. In the Z, the slot is about 4-5mm too short and not straight (see pics in the OP) so the card does not sit 100% flush with the case. However, the aluminium baseplate is wider so from looking from the top, you can say the card sits flush.
Hope this answers your question.

 

Hi pyr0,
The download link doesn't seem to be working anymore (maybe it's just me). Could you please re-upload it?

Thank you

 

Hello guys, I updated the poster, check the edited posting here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...s-esata-expresscard-review-5.html#post7035926

 

I just got an eSATA card based on a Silicon Image 3531 chip (but slightly different to the Delock card - this one has a bulge and also doubles as a powered USB2.0 port ... the bulge doesn't worry me as I don't travel with it in anyway, it was only $10 at a local shop and I figured an extra USB port sometimes comes in handy) ... I've installed the latest driver from the Silicon Image website (1.5.20.1) and it's connected to a Western Digital Green WD20EARS 2TB drive ... unfortunately I'm getting rather abysmal transfer rates on my Z128 running Win7 x64:

HD Tune: WDC WD20EARS-00J99B0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 38.6 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 42.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 41.8 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.9 ms
Burst Rate : 37.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : -1.0%


This is only slightly better than the same drive using a generic USB-SATA cable (a cable with USB on one end, SATA on the other, and a little bulge filled with electronics in the middle), plugged into any of the Z's onboard USB ports or into the eSATA/USB2.0 combo card:

HD Tune: WDC WD20EARS-00J99B0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 27.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 30.5 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 29.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.6 ms
Burst Rate : 23.7 MB/sec
CPU Usage : -1.0%


The free version of HD Tune doesn't do write tests but just doing file copies it seems slightly slower via the eSATA card than via USB. According to Device Manager, look-ahead is enabled as is write cache and the removal policy is set for performance. Curiously, the controller properties indicate that the transfer mode is Programmed IO (rather than DMA). The poor speeds weren't associated with high CPU usage though.

As someone pointed out earlier, I'm pretty certain the card is running in PCI-Express mode (regardless of the presence of a USB2.0 controller on the card itself). I'm pretty sure everything else on my machine is fine - HD Tune on a WD Scorpio Blue in the DVD drive bay maxes out at almost 95MB/sec and of course the SSD maxes out at some insane value north of 500MB/sec. The drive itself seems OK, it gets north of 130MB/sec on a desktop with an nForce based SATA controller (at least right up to when HDTune crashes - I think that desktop has a problem with >1TB drives but that's another story).

Am I missing something here? Which version of the drivers have people used when they've found good transfer rates with the SiI3531 chip? I also notice some discussion about cards with a SiI3132 chip, does anyone have some hard HDTune numbers on that chip?

 

OK here's another bit of the puzzle ... my previous file copies were with large numbers of rather small files (around 1MB) where I got absolutely abysmal transfer rates of around 3MB/sec. HDTune also tests speeds with small reads (64k I believe).

I've just gone and tried running a test with a small number of large files (17 files averaging 1GB each) and after the initial burst of cache speed I get a pretty solid read and write of around 50MB/sec (between the eSATA drive and the SSD). It's better than the HDTune speed and a lot better than the small file speed but it's still nowhere near the speeds discussed at the start of the thread. For comparison, the USB cable gives a pretty solid 30MB/sec read/write.

I've also tried connecting the drive to the eSATA card with a plain eSATA to SATA cable and an external power supply (rather than the powered eSATA caddy I was using) with identical results.

Anyone got any thoughts?

 

Hey Psinewave,

you are using the same driver version which I use. I don't have any issues with the 1.5.20.1. I think your speed issues may be either software related or your hardware is fragmented/slower than expected. Be aware that the drive speed is not the same at the inner and outer tracks of the disk. With my 2TB Samsung EcoGreen I get copy speeds (measured) of approx. 85 MB/s avg. max speed is >100 MB/s (Delock Card). USB 2.0 is generally capped at around 30MB/s max. This all applies ONLY on sequential read speed, e.g. you copy a 5GB file. If you copy a bunch of 100KB files, the HDD needs many accesses which takes a lot more time (several ms for each access over the disk surface) and your read speed may get lower than 5 MB/s easily.

I also checked the properties page in the device manager and I have also PIO mode activated:



So I don't think this is the problem. You can try your HDD on another computer, defrag it or use it with a bootcd in order to eliminate failure sources.

 

Hey Pyr0,

Thanks for your reply! I know what you mean about the small files issue, I guess the problem is that it is still slower than transfers with the onboard drive (the WD Scorpio in the DVD bay) which suggests that the eSATA card is introducing larger latencies into the system. Also, even with large files and HDTune itself the transfer speed is also quite slow. The drive is blank (it's a new drive) so fragmentation is a moot point.

I did run HDTune in another computer (the nForce based desktop) and the drive benched north of 130MB/sec but that motherboard has issues with drives over 1TB in size so I didn't get to do a file transfer test with it.

My money is on a software setting being messed up somewhere but I'm at a bit of a loss to figure out which setting it might be.

I might try the bootcd option ... is there anything particularly tricky in booting off a CD and getting the SiI based card to work?

 

OK that's interesting, I decided to try with a 100GB file (so there are no questions about the cache interfering). Copying from the WD Scorpio Blue in the DVD bay (where it benched above 90MB/sec) to the WD Green 2TB on the eSATA card gave me a stable 63MB/sec starting from the 900GB mark (ie. in the middle of the drive). Still not as good as the results being reported elsewhere nor as good as the HDTune results when plugged into the nForce motherboard but significantly better than both USB2.0 and the HDTune benchmark results on the eSATA card.

So I guess the twin mysteries are why the HDTune results are so much poorer than the actual file copy rates and why these speeds are still so much poorer than what other people have reported.

 

@pyr0: I have a question regarding the AKE BC338. You wrote that this card does not support hotplug. What exactly does that mean?

I would like to leave the BC338 all the time in my Z12. What happens If I connect an external hard disk using esata and switch the device on? Can I access the hard disk? Or can I only use the hard disk after restarting the Z12?

Thanks a lot

Michael

 

If you want to connect to your desired drive, just put your laptop in sleep mode (standby mode), plug in the cable and your drive gets detected. It takes no 15 seconds to do so. No reboot required.

 

Thank you. So I have to put the Z12 in standby every time I want to use my external hard disk?

I thought this has only to be done in order to identify the card once after inserting in the notebook. The AKE would be all the time in my Z12. Do I really need this procedure you described?

 

Even if you have your AKE card permanently in your laptop, drives are not immediately recognized when plugged in, that's the problem. A short sleep-wakeup cycle solves this. I did not find a way to get that to work without this procedure on my Z. Well, you are very welcome to contribute to this thread and find a better solution.

 

Hi there!
Just found this thread ! I'm very interested in the USB 3.0 slim expresscard but one questions remains though : It's about the power supplies. Does every USB 3 expresscard provide the same power supplies?
How many mA did this cards purpose?

Which one could you advice to me? And where to buy these cards in Europe?

Does this Express USB3.0 PCMCIA Card 1port Adapter - eBay (item 230566927475 end time May-24-11 07:38:01 PDT) or this : http://www.ldlc-pro.com/fiche/PB00110526.html has sufficient power supplies to feed an external usb 2 hdd (who needs like 500 mA or so )

 

Hello Psinewave,

Actually i have one (STlab C-430 based on SiL3531) and i have same troubles. I used to use 1.5.20.1 driver pack from SIL site and nearly 18MB/s in crystaldiskmark for 2.5" raid box (Welland ME-520J which is pretty nice thing imho). The strange thing - after first driver install i got near 66-70 MB/s in sequential test. After reboot and till now - no more than 18MB/s.
Still under investigation and have no clue how to resolve it. (BTW i am also in PIO mode 0 in device info).

 

pry0. I just pm'd you about this without reading all thse other pages. my bad. I will now try to adjust the card as said..

I bought the AKE USB 3.0 FlushMount Card. man that thing is crap. it just won't stay in the vaio Z at all, simply falling out, not making the click connection.

I pretty much think i'm going to have to get another Express Card, no matter how bulky, that will just work like normal... any recommendations?


I did see the metal buldging slightly the very first 10 seconds i opened it, but i wasn't sure that - that small problem was what was causing it to not fit...

thanks. it clicked and snag into place.

 

I too am in the market for an Express Card USB 3.0 for the Z. Any particular model that would work well/ possibly one that doesn't stick out so far?

Edit: I need it to work with my Western Digital portable (2.5") 1TB USB 3.0 drive.

 

Update.. I got it to work, but it can't power up my USB 3.0 based Seagate GoFlex 1 TB Portable drive.
Apparently the card doesn't have enough power to turn the drive on?

I have only gotten small flash memory sticks to work.

I guess i'll have to get a USB 3.0 hub with external power just to get my external drive to work?
Well this sucks.

 

Has anyone tried just removing the dvd drive and adding a cable and using that as an esata port instead?

 

For some reason it is not working with Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex portable
but I am getting it to work with drives plugged into a Thermaltake BlacX

 

It seems that USB 3.0 support is very smooth. No one is having any issues with it. [/sarcasm]

 

Can anyone tell me if it'll work with the Western Digital My Passport Essential 1TB USB3.0?

 

Short answer is yes, I believe it will. Details below.

Funny how this is just starting to pop up again, on several threads, and as it happens, I just received some things I ordered to make my Z11 USB 3-ready. I actually wrote a rather long-ish post (no surprise to anyone who has seen my posts ) and decided I had nothing all that special to report so didn't post it. But it's still in a window of my browser, so I'll paste it below if it helps anyone.

Bottom line: the ioGear 2X 3.0 Controller hub is very well made and has auxiliary power that is also well designed. Downsides are it really sticks out a lot from the side and prices gyrate wildly between $25 and $55 - I got mine for $34 on Amazon after reading a great review, next day it was back up to $55 there. It had no trouble driving 3 different USB3 portable drives, using either a USB 2 "helper" or the plug-in power supply.

I was disappointed in the speeds, but looked back and i guess they are about the best you can get through the EC/pci-e interface.

Now for the long-ish post I bagged and am adding to make this one yet another (sigh) annoyingly long post.

You don't have to read it!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I decided to give a shot at the newest, best reviewed ExpressCard USB 3/2 hub and portable, low power, USB 3/2 hard drive. Here's what I ended up getting:

iOgear ExpresCard USB 3 hub:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/<wbr>product/B0046TQ21M


and this iomega portable USB 3 or 2 drive

http://www.amazon.com/gp/<wbr>product/B004NIDHXC


(I thought iOgear and iOmega were still the same company so compatibility issues would be more easily sorted out, but they've split )


RESULTS:

HD Tune Avg Write Speed: 59 mb/s
HD Tune Max Write Speed:90 mb/s
HD Tune Min Write Speed: 3mb/s, but only once, otherwise above 30 mb/s

The EC USB 3 hub can technically run with or without auxiliary power, but the Z11's EC-driven USB 3 alone was insufficient, so the drive needed auxiliary power - from it's own optional DC adapter or a USB2 port on the Z11, performing about the same with either, but not at all with neither.

My (tentative) conclusions:

1) Results about the same as the eSata "experiments" Pyro began about a
2) both iOgear and iOmega give horrible phone/chat tech support. I couldn't even get the drive rpm speed, nor get assistance as to whether these speeds were as good as they can be given limits of hardware used, including the Z's EC/pcie bus speed

Both products appear to be working as they should, but I don't trust the iOmega drives (though they get good reviews) and will probably replace with a WD or Seagate. The iOgear USB-3 hub (which I got on sale for $20) isn't remotely flush with the side of the Z, but it feels extremely well made, and the power supply setup is well engineered, so I think it's a keeper.

 

Btw, the drivers on this Fresco Logic page here support hot-plugging, about 2 drivers a-back. For the AKE 5Gbps USB 3.0 card.

 

I hate Sony VAIO for that they don't have enough space to high 75mm EXoressCard inside! My USB 3.0 card was like showing 2mm of its length on the outside!

 

Hi, I'm trying to install the drivers of my AKE card ( BC628 - -ebay) but I'm not being able (Sony vaio VPCS1..). I have tried to install the drivers form Fresco Logic Page but it hasn't produced any positive result, because it occurs an error during the installation... does anyone know where I can find the drivers for this card??

thanks!

 

Yes here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...s-esata-expresscard-review-5.html#post7035926

 

I bought a AKE BC608 for my Vaio VPCZ1 but the odd thing is it won't fit in! Is it supposed to fit hard? about 5mm of it is still visible & it doesn't seem to be connected!

 

upside down maybe?

 

The card sticks out a few mm. Doesn't affect fit into sleeves because the ports are someone indented from the keyboard deck. Nothing to be done, just enjoy the faster speeds.

 

It's not upside down! Computer doesn't recognize it & it isn't even fixed, comes out with a little rattle!

 

Check the metal sheets if they are not perfectly flat to the black plastic connector, take a pair of fine clamps and press them to sit tight (had that on my AKE card). If it's not getting recognized try searching for hardware manually in device explorer menu.

 

Or order a new card and return the one you have if that is possible

 

Any chance of an updated download link for the driver package? It doesn't seem to work anymore at its current location....

 

I'm hoping to see an updated download link too, please...

 

I got the SiL-based adapter and it's stuck at ~50mb/s speed with windows update drivers (i.e. windows automatically downloaded them). Those are quite dated (2009) and no newer drivers are available, neither from manufacturer or SiL (SiL actually doesn't provide drivers directly to end users of this chipset). Oh well, still better than USB2 30mb tops.

 

pyr0: your updated hoster is dead too; keeps telling me to download iLivid (which is making me livid!). Please reupload. TIA

Will these work with the AKE Expresscard marked BC618D?
Amazon.com: ExpressCard 34mm to USB 3.0 Adapter 5Gbps w/ External Power Port: Computers & Accessories