External eSATA drives -- anybody using them.

[jimbo45]

Hi all
I was wondering if anybody is using eSATA external (note must be EXTERNAL) drives.
the eSATA spec is around 2 - 3 X faster than USB2 so should be good (and switchable between macines).

Any users.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Qdos]

Been using it for yonks and yonks, excellent... especially if you have SATA-II drives both inside and externally - it whacks USB-II for six (although that may be set to change with USB-III...)

 

[carlharsch]

Using them without problems.

 

[Zahl]

esata is without doubt definitely faster. always use it if you can.

 

[pparks1]

I'm using an e-sata drive connected to my DVR at home to increase capacity.

As far as on the computer, I haven't moved over to e-sata drives as so many machines don't have e-sata ports...so that severely limits portability of the drive.

 

[jimbo45]

I'm using an e-sata drive connected to my DVR at home to increase capacity.

As far as on the computer, I haven't moved over to e-sata drives as so many machines don't have e-sata ports...so that severely limits portability of the drive.

Hi there
For laptops this express card works great AFAIK -- haven't tried it myself but saw it today on a colleagues laptop at work. This is where he got it from.

Think I'll go down this route too.

2 Port eSATA ExpressCard 34 and RAID 5/JBOD eSATA ExpressCard 34

Cheers
jimbo

 

[pparks1]

Yeah...my work laptop actually has an e-sata port (Dell Latitude E6400)...however I've got quite a number of lab machines in the office that are desktops without ports...plus nothing but my newest desktop at home has an e-sata port. So, I'm just going to hold off right now.

 

[jkim]

Mine's hurting

I haven't had much luck with running VM's on SimpleTech's eSata drive. I created six partitions and have it attached to a dell workstation, but the machines just get slower and slower. Defrag doesn't help either.

For those that have success, can you please share what you did? I don't find it any faster to run on an external eSata drive compared with the internal drive.

Thanks in advance.

 

[elmo2006]

LOL...i managed to mirror my system drive to the external esata drive and I can boot into Windows 7 from the external drive. I always thought this was not possible as the drivers are usually initiating during boot up!

LOL. I guess not!

 

[Green Lantern]

Wonder if anyone knows of an HD Health Monitor like HD Health that also monitors external eSATA drives?

 

[Casca]

Wonder if anyone knows of an HD Health Monitor like HD Health that also monitors external eSATA drives?

Any app that monitors SATA HDs cannot distinguish between SATA and eSATA.

Use HD Health.

 

[Green Lantern]

I had a feeling that would be the case. For some reason the only device or software I have that can seem to detect and work with my Seagate FreeAgent 1TB is the Windows 7 OS. That's working fine. But even the Seagate Manager Software doesn't "see" the drive to configure it. I wonder why.

GL

 

[Green Lantern]

Ah yes, forgot to mention. I have HD Health installed, but as I indicated above it doesn't see the drive or report on it.

GL

 

[Casca]

A limited search indicates that your FreeAgent is USB, not eSATA.

R U sure re: eSATA?

 

[Green Lantern]

Absolutely sure. I have two cables, a USB two and an eSATA. The throughput I get out of eSATA seals the deal. That's why I bought the drive. A year ago it was the only one I could find that had eSATA.

GL

 

[Britjoe]

I use a Esata Western Digital My book. I used to use its USB2.0 connector, and never had any problems but I found it ridiculously slow, I use it for backing up only of my C:/ Drive.

The eSATA works great half the times of the back up its hot swappable too, but the only problem I do have is the drive has to be unplugged before I can shut my system down or it hangs on to the shutdown screen indefinably till its unplugged, not a great big deal.

 

[GeneO]

Hi all
I was wondering if anybody is using eSATA external (note must be EXTERNAL) drives.
the eSATA spec is around 2 - 3 X faster than USB2 so should be good (and switchable between macines).

Any users.

Cheers
jimbo

Yes, they run as fast as internal drives. I am using a OWC external enclosure with a Western Digital green 2 TB SATA drive. The computer eSATA interface is JMicorn - very fast and reliable. Here is the HDTune on it. It runs faster than my internal Western Digital Black 1TB drives:

 

[GeneO]

Absolutely sure. I have two cables, a USB two and an eSATA. The throughput I get out of eSATA seals the deal. That's why I bought the drive. A year ago it was the only one I could find that had eSATA.

GL

I haven't had good experience with eSATA on a Freeagent drive though. The performance was sub-par. But that was their first model with eSATA. Maybe they have improved it.

 

[essenbe]

I have 2 Seagate Free Agent drives that work great. At least the newer models require a combination USB/eSATA port.Presumably, the usb provides the power to run the 2.5" hard drive. I also have 2 Rosewill External eSATA enclosures. I have 1TB Samsung Spinpoints in them and I am in love with them. They work fantastic. Both seem to transfer info at the same speed of internal drives. I have found that no matter what the benhmarks say - eSATA is much faster than USB 3.0. I can do a backup with Macrium on USB 3 in 6-8 minutes. The same backup on eSATA is 3 min. 40 sec. Perhaps it is different systems, but I have no problems starting or shutting down with eSATA attached.

 

[Dave76]

Yeah...my work laptop actually has an e-sata port (Dell Latitude E6400)...however I've got quite a number of lab machines in the office that are desktops without ports...plus nothing but my newest desktop at home has an e-sata port. So, I'm just going to hold off right now.

I know this was over a year ago but, in case someone else see's this.

If you have a free SATA port you can get a SATA to eSATA cable/back plate, for $3 to $6, that will plug into your SATA port and the plate will attach to the PCI backplate.

Then just use the eSATA cable to your eSATA external HDD.

It will be the same as connecting to your internal SATA port. It's fast, depending on your HDD, and you can run an OS from it, also hot swapable.
You may have to let it clear the cache before removing via 'Safely remove Hardware'.