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eSATA and laptop , advice appreciated


volvofl10

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Having just lost a 160gb external drive im in need of a replacement.

 

Im toying with the idea of an external drive ( already made as opposed to fitting a drive in an enclosure myself)

 

i NEED the following features

USB 2

firewire 1394

300gb + ideally a seagate .........only because i was led to beleive they are the best and have 5 year warranty

 

whats throwing me though is eSATA drives .

many modern external drives are mainly USB2 and eSATA , with the occasional one having firewire as well. but you pay a premium for a firewire connection on an ext hdd.

 

would an external hdd drive ( this seagate model work well with this type of adaptoreSATA pcmcia card

 

i dont expect to get 3gb transfer speeds, as no other pcmcia card adapter has ever matched a desktop equivalent. but if it beats USB 2 speeds that will do

am i right in asuming i would be able to use it as a simple large hdd or does raid come into it at all .

 

opinions and advice welcomed

thanks

volvofl10

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Raidsonic (ICY BOX) do loads of usb/esata boxes, you could just buy one of those and stick any old hdd you want in it (assuming it's sata of course!).

 

I've got a couple myself :)

 

I don't know how fast the pcmcia interface is but I'd hope it's fast enough to allow esata to easily beat usb/firewire.

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What he said!! I too have an Raidsonic unit. Those seagate units do look rather cool though. Depends if you plan to need more space. If the answer is yes then get a Raidsonic unit and a few spare caddies so you can hotswap between drives. Else if the answer is no, get that flashy unit.

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I like the ICY range had them a couple of years now. I liked the Blue light mainly, don't like they have ALI chipset in the 2 5.25 boxes dunno whats in the 3.5 box I got, did not make a difference for it's use though.

 

Does anyone happen to know what chipset is in any of the recent ones ?

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Thats quite nice, that works outside as well as internal (5.25 bay) ? yeah

 

I need some more ext's went looking for a Sata 5.25 could not find one so decided to pull apart one of my 3.5 Sata to Usb and rip art one of my sumvision 5.25 IDE and bodged the 2 together Was gonna run my BR 202 from it but decided to just run one of my tsst sh-163a from it

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the update !!

 

spent far to long searching for an icybox/dock that suits :rolleyes:

 

after reading the replies above, i wanted

sata hdd with no size limit ( sizes are limited at 330GB on many icy models)

esata and usb 2 connectivity

fan cooled box ( looks like icy have moved away from fans)

swappable caddies ( again, limited to non fan cooled boxes)

 

couldnt find one the same as LUK's anywhere either, apart from a robbing thieving bast on ebay

 

only 1 place does the spare caddys as well as the boxes ive been looking at ( thanks for that one lmao2k :thumbup: )

so the outcome is im going for a

Icydock MB-599 ,

 

but not from here, as its cheaper elsewhere

with a spare caddy

and 2 x 300gb+ sata I or II drives . or maybe a 500gb for the time being with another to follow after xmas

 

NOW i need opinions on drives though ?

currently looking at hitachi deskstar or seagate !

 

thanks everyone for the response's as so far

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product = 400 GB Seagate ST3400620AS Barracuda 7200.10, SATA II, 7200 rpm, 16MB Cache, 8.5 ms

 

i paid 56.27 from here scan

 

ebuyer wants 104.27 almost DOUBLE !!!! ebuyer

 

and there was me thinking ebuyer was a cheap supplier !!! Just goes to show, you HAVE to shop around.

 

dare say i could have found it even cheaper but i got a few other things from there as well . 1 lot of shipping costs :thumbup:

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well its here and installed , so i did a test using firstly the usb 2 connection, then secondly the eSATA connection.

both tests done using a specialist program running for 1 minute on the same laptop with anti virus running

I 21:00:48 Operation Started!

I 21:00:48 Device: [0:0:0] ST340062 0AS (S:) (USB)

I 21:00:48 Device Sectors: 781,422,768

I 21:00:48 Device Size: 400,088,457,216 bytes

I 21:00:48 Action: Verify

I 21:00:48 Passes: 1

I 21:00:48 Verifying Sectors...

I 21:01:51 Abort Request Acknowledged

E 21:01:51 Failed to Verify Sectors!

E 21:01:51 Verify Aborted! - Duration: 00:01:03

I 21:01:51 Average I/O Rate: 28,409 KB/s - Maximum I/O Rate: 31,121 KB/s

 

I 21:02:58 Operation Started!

I 21:02:58 Device: [3:0:0] ST340062 0AS 3.AA (S:) (SCSI)

I 21:02:58 Device Sectors: 781,422,768

I 21:02:58 Device Size: 400,088,457,216 bytes

I 21:02:59 Action: Verify

I 21:02:59 Passes: 1

I 21:02:59 Verifying Sectors...

I 21:04:06 Abort Request Acknowledged

E 21:04:06 Failed to Verify Sectors!

E 21:04:06 Verify Aborted! - Duration: 00:01:07

I 21:04:06 Average I/O Rate: 65,693 KB/s - Maximum I/O Rate: 71,434 KB/s

E 21:04:06 Operation Aborted! - Duration: 00:01:07

 

apparently its normal for a sata2 drive to show as a scsi drive ( acc to some ms site i checked on)

 

so for anyone considering a faster option on a laptop, this appears to be the answer ( for the time being)

pcmcia e-Sata card + Sata2 hard drive + external case with both e-Sata and USB 2 ports

 

for a comparison , heres the results of my 2 internal drives on the same laptop

this is the drive with the OS on it

I 21:11:13 Device: [2:0:0] HTS72606 0M9AT00 MH4O (C:, I:) (ATA)

I 21:11:13 Device Sectors: 117,210,240

I 21:11:13 Device Size: 60,011,642,880 bytes

I 21:11:13 Action: Verify

I 21:11:13 Passes: 1

I 21:11:13 Verifying Sectors...

I 21:12:15 Abort Request Acknowledged

E 21:12:15 Failed to Verify Sectors!

E 21:12:15 Verify Aborted! - Duration: 00:01:02

I 21:12:15 Average I/O Rate: 38,062 KB/s - Maximum I/O Rate: 41,504 KB/sE 21:12:15 Operation Aborted! - Duration: 00:01:02

 

2nd hdd is an identical one to the above, but only a storage drive

I 21:12:29 Operation Started!

I 21:12:29 Device: [2:2:0] HTE72606 0M9AT00 MH4O (J:) (ATA)

I 21:12:29 Device Sectors: 117,210,240

I 21:12:29 Device Size: 60,011,642,880 bytes

I 21:12:29 Action: Verify

I 21:12:29 Passes: 1

I 21:12:29 Verifying Sectors...

I 21:13:31 Abort Request Acknowledged

E 21:13:31 Failed to Verify Sectors!

E 21:13:31 Verify Aborted! - Duration: 00:01:01

I 21:13:31 Average I/O Rate: 40,153 KB/s - Maximum I/O Rate: 42,893 KB/s

E 21:13:31 Operation Aborted! - Duration: 00:01:01

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Thanks Donta , i did check that when installing and your correct, they come set as a sata 1 drive.

 

i left mine at that as there's some doubt wether the icybox will work as sata 2 . but I will experiment as the days go on.

 

managed to back up 17gb onto it so far :thumbup: , only another 140Gb to get back to where i was last week LOL

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