Data Back up: eSATA or USB 2.0?

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Funkatron

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Wanted to do some automatic backups on an external drive and I wanted to know which is the prefered interface: external Sata or USB 2.0. Is it better to get an enclosure and drive seperately or do I just get an external drive?
 
eSATA is considerably faster and preferable if you have the hardware.

Personally, I have a Rosewill external enclosure with eSATA, USB 2.0 and Firewire 800. I use it for offsite backup at work. The few times I've had it at home I use eSATA to transfer anything to the drive and then hook it up to a computer at work via USB (no esata port on the dell there) and use rsync regularly to keep it current.
 
ESATA > Firewire > USB. ESATA is basically SATA, and is thus aimed specifically at SATA drives. It is the fastest interface so far. Firewire has less overhead/latency than USB and will have higher throughput too.
 
esata is faster from a speed standpoint. But not all computers have esata support built in. usb 2.0 is more universal. So you can plug it into any computer you need to.
 
Funkatron said:
Is it better to get an enclosure and drive seperately or do I just get an external drive?
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External hard drives usually come with a 1 year warranty so you're better off buying an internal drive with a 3-5 year warranty and then getting an external enclosure with it.
 
Thank you for the answers. Any recomendations on eSATA enclosures or will any do?
 
Old Hippie said:
If the drive is going to be in use for hours at a time, get a unit with a fan.

My current favorite is the Antec MX-1.
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+1
Heard many good things about this guy. Am considering getting one myself.

edit: we've been using one of these at work. Its outlived every other enclosure we've had for the past 2 years
 
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Old Hippie said:
If the drive is going to be in use for hours at a time, get a unit with a fan.

My current favorite is the Antec MX-1.
Click to expand...

That's a good enclosure especially for warm running drives. However, 5400 RPM drives are cool enough that they should be fine in a fanless enclosure.
 
That's a good enclosure especially for warm running drives. However, 5400 RPM drives are cool enough that they should be fine in a fanless enclosure.
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Lemma give ya a personal observation.....About a month ago I purchased a 1.5TB Samsung 5400 rpm green drives and accidently left it run for a coupla hrs in my HD dock.

It got so hot I could barely hold my fingers on it and I was concerned about heat failure.

They may run cooler, but there's no way I'd run any mechanical HD for a few hours without active cooling.
 
2.5 inch form factor for SSD/laptop drives. $30

Comes with:

2.5 in USB 2.0 external enclosure
3.5 in hot swappable SATA drive bay
5.25 in bracket
Power cable adapter
Screws
USB cable and SATA cable.

The 2.5 in enclosure is pushed into the docking bay like a zip drive and ejected likewise. I got two, one for my work PC and one for home so that I can use one SSD and work on the files at either place reliably and quickly ... unlike thumb drives.
 
I'm having a bit of trouble with the enclosure I purchased. As suggested, I got theAntec MX-1, but it seems to be acting up. I coupled it with a WD Green 1TB drive.. I've tried two of the same enclosure and I'm having the same problem while trying to use it in eSata mode: it seem s to be very, very annoyingly picky with the power supply connector. Also, when I do get it working, it seems to work for a bit and then suddenly the system stops reading the drive. If I even so much as touch the enclosure or the end of the power supply that plugs into the enclsoure, the drive inside powers down and my system doesn't recognize it. Am I getting bad enclosures or should I try another drive?
 
Are you sure it's not the SATA cable that's causing the issues? I've heard of people having issues with certain mobo controllers and SATA cables that were too long... Sometimes it's a controller issue, some of the controllers on external enclosures are pretty cheap. Oh and ready-made external drives used to only have a 1 year warranty... But Seagate/WD have been offering external drives (particularly the full-size ones, not so much the portable 2.5" ones) with 3-5 year warranties for a while now, and with discounts they're often cheaper than going down the separate drive + enclosure route.

I say this despite vowing never to buy one of those again after a WD 250GB external drive died on me... Or so I thought, after spending about an hour prying open the enclosure (those things are not meant to be opened by the end user) I managed to rip the drive out and plug it into my system to discover that it was really the enclosure that had died, and yeah, it had a crappy 1-year warranty (that's why I ripped it open to begin with). That was about four years ago, much later I noticed they started offering better warranties.

Oh and the old Venus enclosure listed in my sig works flawlessly over e-SATA (and USB) but I haven't seen it on sale anywhere lately. I looked, because I wanted another, it has a quiet fan and it dissipates a lot of heat since it's made outta metal, not plastic. I remember when I got it I managed to find a good deal of discussion over the different USB controllers on external enclosures; and how awful some of the cheaper ones were, I remember Oxford being amongst the good ones and Cypress being an unreliable one, I think... Dunno if the same happened w/e-SATA later on, when I first got it I wasn't using the e-SATA port, couldn't even find a mobo w/e-SATA.
 
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