Windows 7: Dell E6420; Esata port with Samsung 830 SSD (128GB) connection help.

Hello everyone, just joined up and have a question. I recently added an external Samsung 830 ssd to my laptop and I'm having some issues and concerns. The cable that came with the 'kit' looks and is described as a USB to SATA cable. I have an Esata cable for an internal ssd drive to be used as an external drive; which does NOT work with this drive. The USB to SATA cable provided does. Why? I have the drive attached to the Esata port with the USB cable but am I losing speed connected this way? Would I be better off getting a different cable? I also have the USB3 module connected into modular bay with an empty port that I could use, but having read alot on the speed of the interfaces in question, Esata seems to be the fastest, I'm just not sure it's configured or utilized this way and I'm thinking it's the cable for starters (the drive also appears as a USB device). Thanks in advance, Technoid...

I ran into the same issue as you when I first started messing with eSATA. I assumed since the ports looked the same, that any cable would work. So, I tried getting an external drive working with a regular internal SATA cable. No dice. The drive was never recognized.

I bought a new Vantec USB/eSATA drive enclosure that came with an eSATA cable, and it worked fine. I'm not entirely sure what is different about the cables, but it seems to be from my tests that there is such a thing as a specific eSATA cable.

As for the performance, I would save if you want speed, go eSATA. If you want portability, and will be adding and removing the drive often, go with USB3.

eSata is faster than USB3 (although the specs would suggest differently). The bottleneck is the speed of the disk and USB3 seems to have more overhead. I would think that this is not any different with a normal SSD. It will also not run at more than 3Gb/sec. - especially not at the 4K blocksize that the system uses most.

I ran the exact same 25GB image on the same system with the same HDD. eSata was the fastest.

I use open external enclosures and the eSata cable is very different compared to a USB cable. The cables came with the enclosures.

I agree with what WHS said. Esata is without a doubt faster. I have several SSDs and have a Thermaltake Black X USB/Esata dock. I used to run my Crucial M4 from the dock (Windows 8 CP). It will give you great speed increase over USB 2.0 or 3.0. And you will find the dock very useful and changing drives is less than 1 minute.

DeaconFrost and whs, thanks for your replies...I'm wanting to go with eSata for this Samsung 830 drive (fastest), so looks like I have to get a different cable than the USB-SATA cable supplied with the kit, yes? Any tech suggestions?...The one I tried was identified as a 'eSatap (eSata/USB combo port) to Sata' but it doesn't work (unless the cable itself is bad). If this drive can be used internally, then there certainly should be a cable for it for external connection and get eSata speed.

Technoid, I am fairly certain that the cable that comes with the kit is USB 2.0 cable. It is called a USB to sata because it has sata connections on one end to hook to the drive, but it is USB 2.0.

Rats, that's what I was afraid of...so, I have to find an eSatap to Sata cable (other than the one I have and isn't working) or USB3 to Sata cable...either would be better than the one I have from the kit...this is starting to form up like the digital cable nightmare I went through a couple of months ago...definitely a 'fun' killer...

Why not just get an esata external enclosure. You can put your SSD in it and connect to esata. It will work for any other drive you may have or get in the future.

Found this eSata cable at Newegg.
Newegg.com - SIIG Model CB-SA0111-S1 3.28 ft. eSATA to eSATA Cable

After some troubleshooting swapping out 'non' SSD drives and testing the external cable between laptop platforms (which worked on my XP laptop setup), I investigated my driver and registry entries again on my Windows 7 machine...I had three possible choices for the SATA/AHCI controller and changed it from what was a 'mobile' type to a 'type-6' and walla...working fine, also changed my iastoreV (I think that was it) from 3 to 0 in the registry (changed the AHCI in BIOS and registry earlier). I ran the Windows 7 test and got a whopping 7.9 on the performance score for the drive (running external)...happy with the result, not a hardware issue! Thanks to newmodeus for supplying the external connectivity and working with my to solve what seems to be a rather unique issue that certainly appears as hardware, but was not...cheers...