I'm going to chime in with just one tidbit of information.
The internal SATA connections may be SATA 3, but not all of them. The chip set responsible for SATA will have a limited number of connections for those rated at 6gbps. Therefore they are not going to waste them on external devices, your eSATA port is most likely only capable of SATA 2 (3gbps) speeds. However, it could be SATA 3, one never knows for sure.
Granted, HDDs are barely capable of reaching SATA 1 speeds.
Just for facts - I made a performance comparison eSata and USB3 using HDD, SSHD and SSD. It shows that eSata is fastest.
SSHD - Performance comparison with HDD and SSD
For clarification, here's the system specification of my machine:
Laptop Support - Download the latest updates for your laptop/tablet - Toshiba
It shows SSD for disk drive, but in fact there is a choice of SATA III disk drive or SSD. I chose the disk drive for reasons I've already documented elsewhere in this thread.
BTW, this machine is only a month old, so I can't see why the internal system bus wouldn't be SATA III. eSATA port is directly connected to that system bus.
EDIT: That link didn't redirect, as expected. Please enter:
W50-A-102
for model number in the lower right corner and then select "Product Specifications" tab.
Last edited by Iain; 29 Dec 2014 at 11:43. Reason: wonky redirect
That link still doesn't tell us anything.
Which were completely invalid reasons based on erroneous assumptions. The notebook I'm typing this on uses a lone SSD (500GB Samsung 840 EVO) and runs circles around my fastest 2.5" HDDs, my 500GB WD Blacks (7200rpm) and especially the original 500GB Seagate (5400 rpm) HDD that the notebook came with. The speed difference is so dramatic, I will never, ever own a computer again without at least an SSD boot drive.
You aren't paying attention. All a system needs to be to qualify as SATA III is to just be faster than SATA II. Rating a system as being SATA III doesn't necessarily mean it will run at full SATA III speeds. If SATA III port (including an e-SATA port) runs off a PCI-e lane or an add-on chip instead of being a port run off the CPU, the maximum speed you will get I only 5Gbps instead of the full 6Gbps of SATA III. Even though a bit slower, 5Gbps still meets SATA III standards. If more than one SATA port runs a single PCI-e lane or the port shares the lane with something else, such as the Wi-Fi card (yes, laptops do have separate Wi-Fi cards; they are just tiny) or Bluetooth, then the available speed will be drastically reduced. However, since the source is still SATA III, the shared port will still be considered SATA III.
Again, keep in mind that HDDs will not run as fast as the top speed of SATA II so you have nothing to "measure" the speed of a SATA III port, be it standard SATA or e-SATA.
Quote