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eSATA External Storage Drive Reviewed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the happy-marriages-of-technology dept.

Tom's Hardware has a practical look at an eSATA drive offering from Taiwanese storage firm Thecus. From the article: "Thecus' N2050 is one of the first external twin-drive RAID boxes that uses eSATA. As expected, its performance was far better than what USB 2.0 offers. The end result is impressive. The date transfer rate of 30 MB/s that USB 2.0 offers does indeed pale in comparison to 100 MB/s for eSATA, while the WD1500 drives are capable of delivering even better performance in RAID 0. It is also good to see that Thecus did not throw the USB 2.0 interface away, because it is a nice backup interface whenyou want to use the device with other computers via USB 2.0."

7 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. eSATA drawbacks by Ice+Wewe · · Score: 4, Informative
    eSATA seems to be the new buzz word in computing these days. The only problem is, that you're forced to use USB 2.0 or Ethernet to access the drive because very few motherboards are equipped with eSATA connectors. eSATA connectors have the same pins at the regular SATA connectors, but have different male and female connectors. Thus, although it may seem convient, if you really want to get full performence out of the drive, you'll have to buy one of the few motherboards that sports an eSATA port.

    Also, mentioned in the article... the SATA bus boasts a wonderful 3Gb/s (or 300MB/s). This however, is not the bottle neck when it comes to performence. As the article mentions, the top SATA drives on the market today only get about 85MB/s read/write to the disk. So although you may get 300MB/s from the disk cache, and the controller, you'll never really get 300MB/s. Still, it's miles from Ultra-ATA.

    1. Re:eSATA drawbacks by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 4, Informative

      Surprisingly, the eSATA connector doesn't need to be on the "motherboard". There are brackets that adapt the internal connectors to the card slot openings in the back. There are plenty of SATA and SATA RAID adapters with back port connectors for this very purpose so when you max out the internal bays, you can go external.

    2. Re:eSATA drawbacks by Kjella · · Score: 3, Informative

      Or you can use the included eSATA card (yes, Thecus is aware most don't have that port). Furthermore, USB2/Firewire IS a bottleneck both in sustained and burst speed. And for video editing, notice that while the top speed is quite limited by the Thecus unit, the minimum sustained speed is very very close to an internal drive. I was considering getting one earlier but found a most unimpressive hard disk compatibility list and forum posts about incompatible drives. That made me go with a LaCie with disks already installed instead. Maybe next time...

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  2. Easy TiVo expansion by pjcreath · · Score: 4, Informative

    The upcoming (high def) TiVo Series 3 has an e-SATA port. Adding more recording space will be a whole lot easier than it was before, especially for the less adventurous folks.

  3. you're missing the point by RelliK · · Score: 4, Informative
    Also, mentioned in the article... the SATA bus boasts a wonderful 3Gb/s (or 300MB/s). This however, is not the bottle neck when it comes to performence. As the article mentions, the top SATA drives on the market today only get about 85MB/s read/write to the disk. So although you may get 300MB/s from the disk cache, and the controller, you'll never really get 300MB/s. Still, it's miles from Ultra-ATA.

    It is true that a single drive cannot saturate the SATA channel. (85MB/s is actually a _very_ generous estimate. Typical performance is closer to 50-60MB/s). So, SATA certainly doesn't need more bandwidth in the near future. However, for eSATA, the extra bandwidth is _very_ useful. It would allow manufacturers to produce RAIDs with eSATA ports instead of SCSI or FC. (Right now, you still need a SCSI or FC card if you want to get any sort of performance). This would effectively commoditise the low-end RAID market, which is a very welcome development.

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  4. Re:whole article ruined on page 6 for me: by HardCase · · Score: 3, Informative

    Gotta read it literally. No mention of redundancy. Of course, the missing (but, I guess, implied) extra sentence telling us that "only" half of our data would be gone wouldn't have killed them.

  5. Yet another review stating an incorrect fact by this+great+guy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Every single review of storage technologies I have read in the past 2 years state at least one (IMHO very important) incorrect fact. This is no exception with this one:

    Page 2: "The fastest 3.5" SATA drives do not exceed 85 MB/s. A data transfer rate of 300 MB/s between a PC and a SATA drive cannot thus be matched by the speed of a SATA drive." Yes it can. When data is exchanged to/from the disk's cache, data throughput of 250+ MB/s can be achieved for a fraction of a second. Even if it's only for a fraction of a second, it is still important (else manufacturers would not even put cache memory on disks).