eSATA and laptop , advice appreciated

[volvofl10]

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

[LIGHTNING UK!]

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.

[lmao2k]

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.

[volvofl10]

interesting idea about the hotswap caddies

whose the preferred supplier at present ?

 

thanks both of you for the suggestions

[LIGHTNING UK!]

lol wherever you can get the model you want from!

 

Basically, checkout raidsonic's website, find the right one and then chuck the model number into google and see where's selling it.

[dontasciime]

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 ?

[lmao2k]

I use http://www.iconuk.co.uk/ for my caddies

[volvofl10]

Thanks all of you

 

so many to choose from , i gave up for a while.

 

just off to Italy for 3 days ( working unfortunately) , but will follow up when i get back

[LIGHTNING UK!]

http://www.raidsonic.de/en/pages/products/...e_objectID=4540

 

That's the one I've got.

[dontasciime]

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

[LIGHTNING UK!]

No, it's just external. I'm sure the caddy itself could go into a 5.25 bay if you had the appropriate dock though. (That might be what lmao2k does?)

[dontasciime]

Ok cheers I think I might have clicked thru the links and read it wrong or a different one similar to that

[volvofl10]

the update !!

 

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

 

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 )

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

[mmalves]

My vote goes to Seagate and their 5 years warranty

 

I've used a Seagate 20GB for 8 years (straight 24/7) before it showed the first signs of wear, and I still use it in a fat PS2 every now and then

[cornholio7]

i have had 2 x 250gb maxtors running for about 3 yrs constantly without any problems and the WD caviars i have ( 4 of them) have all been good too

[LIGHTNING UK!]

WD SE16's and RE2's for me.

 

The Seagate 7200.11 look good though.

[dontasciime]

Is he buying us stuff.

 

Ok then I will have 2 hitachi 1TB's thanks

[volvofl10]

320gb seagate was pre order at scan , so got a 400gb instead . nothing special, as i dont think for 1 minute i will even get sata 1 speeds with the pcmcia setup

400gb seagate barracuda

 

unfortunately donta, there fresh out of hitachi 1TB's

[dontasciime]

unfortunately donta, there fresh out of hitachi 1TB's

 

hmm 750 gig

[volvofl10]

Dear Simon Cowell

 

my friend donta has kindly offered to accept 750 gig's , so if you would like him to host the next 750 hopefulls in the next round of X factor audition's...................

[dontasciime]

yes but only the fit ones

[volvofl10]

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

[volvofl10]

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

[dontasciime]

one other thing you may want to check is which state Seagate ship their sata 2 hard drives. In SATA 1 state or SATA 2 , set by a little jumper. I cannot remember but I think my 2 Seagate sata 2 drives bought about 8 months ago shipped set to SATA 1

[volvofl10]

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 , only another 140Gb to get back to where i was last week LOL