PCIe 2.0 Controller card w/ 2 esata ports

[leftPCbehind209]

I was told to buy one of these http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MXPCIE6GS2/ (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MXPCIE6GS2/)because it is supposedly better than USB2/FW for external DVD burning.

1) Is that true?

2) What else could I use the eSATA port for?

3) Is there a better PCIe card I should consider for other purposes down the road?

Thanks.

[alphaod]

Won't make a difference for burning DVDs (or even Bluray for that matter).

I use it for external HDDs. For one of my drives, over FW I get about 50MB/s, but over eSATA I get about 95MB/s; that's a significant difference.

[Hellhammer]

I agree with the above. USB 2.0 nor FW800 is going to be your bottleneck, it's the DVD drive and optical media itself. You can't do anything about it.

eSATA is useful if you are going to use external hard drives as it's faster than USB but not much faster than FW800 in real world (I get around 80MB/s sustained with my external FW800 drive). With eSATA, you can get more but that depends on the drive. Some good ones may have over 130MB/s sustained.

[nanofrog]

I was told to buy one of these http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MXPCIE6GS2/ (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MXPCIE6GS2/)because it is supposedly better than USB2/FW for external DVD burning.

1) Is that true?

2) What else could I use the eSATA port for?

3) Is there a better PCIe card I should consider for other purposes down the road?

Thanks.
1. No. Optical drives aren't that fast, so USB 2.0 and FW800 have sufficient enough real world bandwidth to handle it just fine.

2. HDD's or SSD's (since the card is a 6.0Gb/s model) in an external enclosure.

3. The RAID version (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MXPCIE6GRS/), which is Port Multiplier compliant. What this allows, is 5x disks to be attached to a single port. So you'd be able to run up to 10 disks total on the card simultaneously.

[Transporteur]

eSATA is useful if you are going to use external hard drives as it's faster than USB but not much faster than FW800 in real world

3Gb/s eSATA is good for up to 260-270MB/s. I would definitely say that this is much faster than FW800!

But yes, there is no point using eSATA for an optical drive.

[leftPCbehind209]

1. No. Optical drives aren't that fast, so USB 2.0 and FW800 have sufficient enough real world bandwidth to handle it just fine.

2. HDD's or SSD's (since the card is a 6.0Gb/s model) in an external enclosure.

3. The RAID version (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MXPCIE6GRS/), which is Port Multiplier compliant. What this allows, is 5x disks to be attached to a single port. So you'd be able to run up to 10 disks total on the card simultaneously.

Re: #3 answer above - Are you referring to an external HDD like this one: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Mercury-EliteAL-Pro-RAID

Also, if I buy some Caviar Black internal 2tb or Caviar Green 2tb internal drives, could I put them in an enclosure that has eSATA and plug into the PCI card? I ask because those drives have much longer warranties that the external HD's I've been buying. If so, which enclosure do you recommend considering speed/price?

[Hellhammer]

3Gb/s eSATA is good for up to 260-270MB/s. I would definitely say that this is much faster than FW800!

If you're using an SSD or RAIDed HDs, then it is. I should have mentioned that I was talking about a single HD setup, there eSATA isn't much faster as the drive is the bottleneck

Also, if I buy some Caviar Black internal 2tb or Caviar Green 2tb internal drives, could I put them in an enclosure that has eSATA and plug into the PCI card? I ask because those drives have much longer warranties that the external HD's I've been buying. If so, which enclosure do you recommend considering speed/price?

This (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173042) is the top seller in NewEgg, it's quite good deal IMO

[Transporteur]

If you're using an SSD or RAIDed HDs, then it is. I should have mentioned that I was talking about a single HD setup, there eSATA isn't much faster as the drive is the bottleneck

Single hard drives these days reach over 150MB/s sustained. That's almost a 100% increase over what is possible with FW800!

FW800 is ok for slow spinning small capacity hard drives, but with drive sizes above 1TB (no matter of the RPM), FW800 will always create a bottleneck.

[nanofrog]

Re: #3 answer above - Are you referring to an external HDD like this one: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Mercury-EliteAL-Pro-RAID
Though that one would work, it would also work with the non RAID version (the RAID versions of the enclosure).

There is a non RAID version of the enclosure (has 2x eSATA ports on the back), and can also work with either card.

But what I was thinking of, is more along the lines of this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132016&cm_re=port_multiplier_enclosure-_-16-132-016-_-Product) (you can get 4, 5, 8, and 10 bay versions). One eSATA port per up to 5x disks, so the 4 & 5 bay units have one port, 8 & 10 bay units have 2x eSATA ports.

Also, if I buy some Caviar Black internal 2tb or Caviar Green 2tb internal drives, could I put them in an enclosure that has eSATA and plug into the PCI card? I ask because those drives have much longer warranties that the external HD's I've been buying. If so, which enclosure do you recommend considering speed/price?
Yes, you can. As per brands, Sans Digital (RoseWill are the same, but Sans Digital tends to have silver versions as well). Enhance is a good brand too, but it's more expensive than Sans Digital lately, so I'd stick with the cheaper version (they're rather simple internally, so doesn't matter).

[Hellhammer]

Single hard drives these days reach over 150MB/s sustained. That's almost a 100% increase over what is possible with FW800!

FW800 is ok for slow spinning small capacity hard drives, but with drive sizes above 1TB (no matter of the RPM), FW800 will always create a bottleneck.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3636/western-digitals-new-velociraptor-vr200m-10k-rpm-at-450gb-and-600gb/3
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2tb-hdd-caviar,2261-7.html

I haven't seen a single drive with +150MB/s sustained. 600GB VR should be the fastest on market and even it can't do over 150MB/s. Bursts can easily be over 200MB/s but those are not that relevant. As for +1TB drives, see the second link, 2TB Caviar Green does 77MB on average, that's what FW800 can provide.

Sure if you're using +1TB 7200rpm drive (Caviar Black or Seagate Barracuda XT), then FW800 will be a bottleneck but if you stay with low-cost drives such as Caviar Green, then FW800 is sufficient. Of course eSATA is more "future-proof" and may end up costing the same as FW800 externals and enclosures are expensive

[alphaod]

Re: #3 answer above - Are you referring to an external HDD like this one: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Mercury-EliteAL-Pro-RAID


Those can connect to just about any eSATA card because the RAID is done via the enclosure and not the controller card.

[leftPCbehind209]

Thanks to everyone for all the help thus far.

Anyone have any experience with this hard drive enclosure: http://www.amazon.com/Macally-G-S350SU-Hi-Speed-External-Enclosure/dp/B0013LRLUM/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1286569996&sr=8-3

It looks pretty nice, has good reviews.

[Transporteur]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3636/western-digitals-new-velociraptor-vr200m-10k-rpm-at-450gb-and-600gb/3
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/2tb-hdd-caviar,2261-7.html

I haven't seen a single drive with +150MB/s sustained. As for +1TB drives, see the second link, 2TB Caviar Green does 77MB on average, that's what FW800 can provide.


I recall the 2TB WD Black reaches 150MB/s sustained. Makes perfect sense considering that the 1TB Black already reaches about 115MB/s sustained.

77MB/s sustained for a 2TB Green? I don't have any clue what the tester messed up there. Even my 500GB WD Greens do 75MB/s sustained and they are over 50% filled!
The 2TB WD Green drives reach more than 200MB/s in a RAID 0 setup, so 100MB/s each, and again, the array is not empty!

I've got all of these drives (well except for the 2TB Black), so I can assure you that the numbers I stated are correct (tested with AJA System test).

[Hellhammer]

I recall the 2TB WD Black reaches 150MB/s sustained. Makes perfect sense considering that the 1TB Black already reaches about 115MB/s sustained.

77MB/s sustained for a 2TB Green? I don't have any clue what the tester messed up there. Even my 500GB WD Greens do 75MB/s sustained and they are over 50% filled!
The 2TB WD Green drives reach more than 200MB/s in a RAID 0 setup, so 100MB/s each, and again, the array is not empty!

I've got all of these drives (well except for the 2TB Black), so I can assure you that the numbers I stated are correct (tested with AJA System test).

Hmm, could well be. In this (http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_caviar_green_2tb_review_wd20ears) review it does up to 110MB/s but in this (http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/28126-western-digital-caviar-green-2tb-hard-drive-review-7.html) it does only 87MB/s. Looks like the EARS version does well over 100MB/s while EADS version lags behind with 80-90MB/s.

I looked at some 2TB Caviar Black reviews and none of them had +150MB/s but does it really matter. ~145MB/s is quite insane as well, few MB/s this or that way ain't that important :p

If we get back to the actual topic, eSATA is the way to go if you want the best performance.

[nanofrog]

Thanks to everyone for all the help thus far.

Anyone have any experience with this hard drive enclosure: http://www.amazon.com/Macally-G-S350SU-Hi-Speed-External-Enclosure/dp/B0013LRLUM/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1286569996&sr=8-3

It looks pretty nice, has good reviews.
For a single disk enclosure, you should be fine with it (sells under different brand names from what I've seen; most gear anymore is from a handful of makers at best in Asia <ODM/OEM suppliers>, so there's actually few choices if a vendor gets their products from ODM's rather than at least design it themselves). OEM will build a design they're handed, so long as they're paid sufficiently to do so.

eSATA is just a pass through, so there's no active circuits. The active part is just a USB to SATA bridge, and there's a PSU (wall wart) in the box. Not much there at all. ;)