SATA drive in USB3.0 Enclosure

[meddylad]

Hello - i have a 2.5" Momentus drive (model ST9500420AS, 500GB 16MB cache) and was wondering would get USB3.0 speeds by using an external connector, a USB3.0 cable and my laptop which has built in USB3.0 ports (and the Renesas driver), so i can use it as a portable drive

 

[pooch]

Hello - i have a 2.5" Momentus drive (model ST9500420AS, 500GB 16MB cache) and was wondering would get USB3.0 speeds by using an external connector, a USB3.0 cable and my laptop which has built in USB3.0 ports (and the Renesas driver), so i can use it as a portable drive

Yes but all parts must be USB3 compliant

 

[Zepher]

No, you won't get the full USB3 speed (USB3 spec is higher than normal drives can transfer) but it will be faster than USB2.

 

[GeneO]

I have a Momentus in a USB 3.0 enclosure and connect it through the same NEC/Renesas USB3.0 chip . it runs at full speed and is not limited by the USB 3.0 interface. However the hard drive will only do 45 MB/s on the outer part of the platter and 35 MB/s averaged across the platters so don't expect much more than USB 2.0 speeds. Your drive is newer than mine so should fare a bit better.

 

[cloud8521]

i would actually expect something closer to around 70MB/s

when i used my drive (its a monster of a drive btw) i got 130MB/s what that was with its cache off

 

[whs]

I made a comparson USB2/USB3 with the same enclosure on the same system. My USB3 was about 30% faster than USB2. But I would guess that you get different results with different hardware.

 

[seekermeister]

I have a Momentus in a USB 3.0 enclosure and connect it through the same NEC/Renesas USB3.0 chip . it runs at full speed and is not limited by the USB 3.0 interface. However the hard drive will only do 45 MB/s on the outer part of the platter and 35 MB/s averaged across the platters so don't expect much more than USB 2.0 speeds. Your drive is newer than mine so should fare a bit better.

I get a lot better than that with my external drive, even though it is a slow RPM drive, and it is connected via eSATA 2.0. Is USB 3 that much slower than eSATA?

 

[cloud8521]

I have a Momentus in a USB 3.0 enclosure and connect it through the same NEC/Renesas USB3.0 chip . it runs at full speed and is not limited by the USB 3.0 interface. However the hard drive will only do 45 MB/s on the outer part of the platter and 35 MB/s averaged across the platters so don't expect much more than USB 2.0 speeds. Your drive is newer than mine so should fare a bit better.

I get a lot better than that with my external drive, even though it is a slow RPM drive, and it is connected via eSATA 2.0. Is USB 3 that much slower than eSATA?

well like i said, i did get 130 MB/s

 

[pooch]

Is USB 3 that much slower than eSATA?

no its very similar

 

[meddylad]

Im using AS SSD to run benchmarks but im gettin a strange result on my external usb3 drive. The sequential starts off at 30mb/s but then slowly drops to 1.4mb/s and stays at this speed - i cant see why it would be doing this.

Aslo, considering im using usb3 with all the correct componets, i thought i would be getting more than 30mb/s, considering the drive is a 7200rpm with 16mb cache

Out of curiosity, would the actual adapter circuit board (where the sata connects to the usb) be slowing it down or is that irrelevent

 

[pooch]

Im using AS SSD to run benchmarks but im gettin a strange result on my external usb3 drive. The sequential starts off at 30mb/s but then slowly drops to 1.4mb/s and stays at this speed - i cant see why it would be doing this.

Aslo, considering im using usb3 with all the correct componets, i thought i would be getting more than 30mb/s, considering the drive is a 7200rpm with 16mb cache

Out of curiosity, would the actual adapter circuit board (where the sata connects to the usb) be slowing it down or is that irrelevent

Have you got more hardware details??

 

[meddylad]

Im using AS SSD to run benchmarks but im gettin a strange result on my external usb3 drive. The sequential starts off at 30mb/s but then slowly drops to 1.4mb/s and stays at this speed - i cant see why it would be doing this.

Aslo, considering im using usb3 with all the correct componets, i thought i would be getting more than 30mb/s, considering the drive is a 7200rpm with 16mb cache

Out of curiosity, would the actual adapter circuit board (where the sata connects to the usb) be slowing it down or is that irrelevent

Have you got more hardware details??

Im using a 2.5" Momentus 7200.3 notebook drive - 500gb, 7200rpm, 16mb cache. Its connected via a usb3 cable to a usb3 drive with renesas usb3 driver loaded. Im shocked that the drive is so slow - in usb2 i get 19mb/s sequential but usb3 only gives me 30mb/s....but then it slows down to a crawl 1mb/s - i have updated the driver as this sriver is the second one released by Dell but thought that i should get up in the 50-60mb/s - i say this because the iomega has a usb3 external drive out that can reach up to 10 times faster - even though the drive inside is a 5400rpm

 

[pooch]

Out of curiosity, would the actual adapter circuit board (where the sata connects to the usb) be slowing it down or is that irrelevent

I understand you are using a USB3 cable and the hdd is not in an enclosure is this correct?
If so then the adaptor between the two components will also have to be USB3 compliant

 

[meddylad]

The HDD is in an enclosure and the adapter is usb3 compliant - the enclosure i bought was this one below

2.5" SATA USB 3.0 2.0 HDD Enclosure Case Caddy Windows7 | eBay UK

You basically insert your hdd and its converted to usb3. I know 100% that my usb3 driver is loaded and the correct version, and i know that the system definitely has usb3 ports (2 of them, 1 usb2 and an esata)

 

[pooch]

The HDD is in an enclosure and the adapter is usb3 compliant - the enclosure i bought was this one below

2.5" SATA USB 3.0 2.0 HDD Enclosure Case Caddy Windows7 | eBay UK

You basically insert your hdd and its converted to usb3. I know 100% that my usb3 driver is loaded and the correct version, and i know that the system definitely has usb3 ports (2 of them, 1 usb2 and an esata)

Then it should be working

Try testing it with ATTO http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1749/ATTO_Disk_Benchmark_v2.46.html

 

[meddylad]

Tested with ATTO - the results are below

ps do these speeds look normal - they ceetainly are not "10x faster than usb2.0" as advertised

 

[pooch]

No they are not and the write speeds trouble me as I think they are slow.

This is a capture from one of my 2.5 drives the write and read speeds seem to be more centralised

 

[pooch]

Just to remove all doubt that the USB3 driver is working try connecting to a USB2 port and repeating the test

 

[meddylad]

Here is the same test but via usb2 - im so shocked as to how slow the speeds are, and although the usb3 speeds are a little faster, they are quite pathetic considering they are supossed to offer more speed. I mean, there are some compact flash cards that are faster here than my usb3.0 drive

 

[pooch]

Yes I believe you that it is very disappointing and I cannot explain why it is so slow I also doubt that we will be able to improve on these speeds.
I have just had an interesting thought, but don't get your hopes up. How full is this external drive?