eSATA Help

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mokkapoop

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 6, 2005
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Hello everyone! Hope everyone has had a good weekend.

Well, about a month ago, I found a really good deal on a 120gb laptop hard drive ($75). I then found an eSATA external enclosure. It has both USB and eSATA support. I understand that eSATA is much faster than USB 2.0 and I wanted to take advantage of this. However, the hard drive is only 5400rpm.

Would I need to get a PCI or PCI-e card? (I have both slots).

I have found a couple of good cards, cheap, but not sure of the sellers. Can anyone help me out:

http://iwin2win.stores.yahoo.net/pciexsaii1xi.html PCI-E ($16)

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?In...rs-_-AUA-5020&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=AUA-5020 - PCI - $17

Do I need to go PCI or PCI-e? If you recommend any other cards, please do so! Thanks in advance!
 
Since that PCI-E card you listed was x1, I would say go with PCI, according to the following numbers I found:

eSATA theoretical max bandwidth: 300 MB/s
PCI Express (x1 link) theoretical max bandwidth: 250 MB/s
PCI Express (x2 link) theoretical max bandwidth: 500 MB/s
PCI (64 bit, 100MHz) theoretical max bandwidth: 800 MB/s (I believe most motherboards use 64 bit/100MHz, but I could be wrong)

Of course these are theoretical and you might not even see anywhere near any of these speeds. It may be a moot point.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidths
 
Don't forget that PCI is a shared bus while PCIe provides this bandwidth for every single device connected to it, without the overhead that comes with a shared bus.

At any rate PCI or PCIe doesn't matter in this case. If anything I'd go with PCIe since it means that you can keep using this eSATA card in newer mainboards as well without issues.
 
If you have a free internal SATA port, all you should need is an eSATA bracket, not an entire SATA Controller. And judging by the Dell model in your sig, you should have a free SATA port.

$5 - Rosewill RC-202 Internal SATA to eSATA II External 2Port Host Bracket Cable 11"
 
enginurd said:
If you have a free internal SATA port, all you should need is an eSATA bracket, not an entire SATA Controller. And judging by the Dell model in your sig, you should have a free SATA port.

$5 - Rosewill RC-202 Internal SATA to eSATA II External 2Port Host Bracket Cable 11"
Click to expand...

Ah yes, there's that option too :D
 
Done, purchased one like this for $3 plus shipping from newegg and it should be here tomorrow.

Should be considerably faster than USB, correct?
 
mokkapoop said:
Done, purchased one like this for $3 plus shipping from newegg and it should be here tomorrow.

Should be considerably faster than USB, correct?
Click to expand...

Theoretically... yes.

USB 2.0: 480Mb/s = 60MB/s
SATA300: 3.0Gb/s = 300MB/s
 
Don't forget that USB has a lot more overhead, and is a shared bus, so any other devices you put on the same root controller will further reduce the bandwidth.

Have fun with your new toy, mokkapoop :)
 
Yes eSATA is much faster but JMicron s a very problematic company and forget eSATA if you run raid...
 
iJeff said:
PCI (64 bit, 100MHz) theoretical max bandwidth: 800 MB/s (I believe most motherboards use 64 bit/100MHz, but I could be wrong)

Of course these are theoretical and you might not even see anywhere near any of these speeds. It may be a moot point.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidths
Click to expand...

nope. 64 bit and speeds greater than 33mhz were almost exclusively the domain of workstation/server class hardware. Consumer systers are PCI32-33mhz. For 133MB/sec.

For a single drive the speed difference really doesn't matter much. The 5400 laptop drive probably has a peak sustained (after the cache is flushed) of about 40MB/sec, and normal desktop drives top out around 80.
 
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