Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
e-sata with Macbook Pro
- Thread starter johnsy
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Well... eSATA is capable of speeds matching those of SATA hard drives. SATA hard drives are what's currently found in most, if not all, new computers, including laptops.
The difference is that eSATA is external and uses a different connector than that of SATA.
There may be a few reasons why you won't get the full speed of eSATA. How the external hard drive manufacturer implimented it, any software limitations. Similar to any other device, whether it's USB or Firewire.
But, you should see a significan improvement if file transfer speeds with eSATA.
eSATA is relatively fast, but compared to FW800 I am not sure.
I have the PNY ESATA card, which is basically the same thing as most 2 port ESATA expresscards. Driver support is not very good and there are stability issues with it and doesn't look like they're going to be fixed anytime soon
The chip inside is the Silicon Image 3132. Just google that + OSX and you will see what I mean.
Make sure you download the latest 1.1.9 driver off of Silicon's website. the RAID driver will only work if you flash the card with a RAID "BIOS" or firmware. so firmware and driver are paired with this one.
I have the PNY ESATA card, which is basically the same thing as most 2 port ESATA expresscards. Driver support is not very good and there are stability issues with it and doesn't look like they're going to be fixed anytime soon
The chip inside is the Silicon Image 3132. Just google that + OSX and you will see what I mean.
Make sure you download the latest 1.1.9 driver off of Silicon's website. the RAID driver will only work if you flash the card with a RAID "BIOS" or firmware. so firmware and driver are paired with this one.
I've never used esata.. but my external 1tb hdd has an esata + fw800 and I use the fw800 which is pretty fast..
I put together an eSATA external usng a Kingwin Z1 enclosure, a 7200 RPM500GB Seagate SATA Hard Drive. It's connected to my MBP via a Vantec Express Card and everything works great in Leopard and on my Vista Bootcamp Partition registering full speeds near the expected 3Gb/s transfer rate. This is a comparison of about 3000Mb/s for eSATA against 800Mb/s for Firewire800, 480Mb/sec for USB2.0, and 400Mb/sec for Firewire400.
I partitioned the eSATA drive into two halves - one that I use as a TimeMachine backup in Leopard and the other that I use for gaming installations in Vista.
As a note... the Vantec card uses the Silicon Image chipset and registers as a generic eSATA ExpressCard device. This has caused no problems in functionality. But, the drive itself was a little cumbersome to set-up. Neither Leopard nor Vista would recognize the unformatted drive by eSATA, instead I had to connect via USB to establish initial formatting and partitions. But, once it was set-up the eSATA interface works great... and FAST.
I partitioned the eSATA drive into two halves - one that I use as a TimeMachine backup in Leopard and the other that I use for gaming installations in Vista.
As a note... the Vantec card uses the Silicon Image chipset and registers as a generic eSATA ExpressCard device. This has caused no problems in functionality. But, the drive itself was a little cumbersome to set-up. Neither Leopard nor Vista would recognize the unformatted drive by eSATA, instead I had to connect via USB to establish initial formatting and partitions. But, once it was set-up the eSATA interface works great... and FAST.
That's pretty slow.. yesterday I tried timing the difference between fw400 and fw800 by copying a 10.78GB file from my external 1tb hdd via fw400 to my mbp.. and it took 6.2minutes and fw800 took 3.1 minutes.
which would slow it down. Just copied a 6.66 GB file to the external in just over 3 minutes.
but as i mentioned earlier, the drivers at the moment for esata aren't up to par. Hopefully these issues can be fixed with the next Leopard update.
Esata *can* be faster than firewire 800, *if* you have a properly set up RAID. However esata drives cannot be bus powered.
The Expresscard slot can also only result in USB 2 speed, which is way slower than firewire 800. Depends on your esata card I think, but mostly comes with the real PCI express speed.
The Expresscard slot can also only result in USB 2 speed, which is way slower than firewire 800. Depends on your esata card I think, but mostly comes with the real PCI express speed.
The SATA expresscards do not run at USB 2.0 speeds. They are connected via PCI bus. System profiler lists it as a PCI expresscard controller.
Other cards such as expresscard card readers however, may use the USB bus.
If esata's speed over a usb connection isnt an indication that it runs through the PCI bus, then I dont know what is.
Other cards such as expresscard card readers however, may use the USB bus.
If esata's speed over a usb connection isnt an indication that it runs through the PCI bus, then I dont know what is.
esata is faster, but fw800 is more convenient b\c you don't have to get an expresscard..
benchmarks:
http://eshop.macsales.com/NewsRoom/Framework.cfm?page=articles/article_extre_hdmerc.html
benchmarks:
http://eshop.macsales.com/NewsRoom/Framework.cfm?page=articles/article_extre_hdmerc.html
That's unbelievable -- literally
The Seagate drive itself is capable of maybe 720 Mb/s (90 MB/s) sustained output under ideal conditions. The eSATA interface is not going to make it any faster. I think that the figures you are quoting are the theoretical maximums, not accurately measured, real life results.
eh? USB 2 consistently benches slower than fw400 b\c USB 2 relies to much on the CPU, slowing it down considerably...It just theoretically can reach higher, but real world tests show otherwise..
I have the seagate barracuda installed in the mercury elite from OWC with esata/fw800/fw400/usb 2.0... I never use the fw400/usb2.0 as fw400 is about 2 times faster than usb 2.0 and fw800 is 2x faster than fw400.. but I've never tried esata as I dont own a expresscard.
And you would know this because?
I didn't list model numbers. So, you're making assumptions from what you "think" you know.
Politlely... ****
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...ance,709.html?p=1987,1991,1984,1989,2002,1982
Even the fastest 15,000 RPM SAS drives cannot top 150MB/s (1.2Gb/s). This assumes it is a straight read/write.
The drive you have is significantly slower than the fastest drive on the chart (Seagate Cheetah 15k5).
Your drive going at 3Gb/s is not only unlikely, it's physically impossible.
Because it's common knowledge that hard drive mechanisms lag behind the theoretical maximum of their interfaces.
That's uncalled for. Lighten up.
hahahahaha
Come on stop the comedy.
A single drive will not saturate a eSATA link. It's be lucky to saturate a FW800 link.
This is easy to prove. Transfer a half gig of data on a Sata link and time it. You won't get 300MBps ..trust.
Come on stop the comedy.
A single drive will not saturate a eSATA link. It's be lucky to saturate a FW800 link.
This is easy to prove. Transfer a half gig of data on a Sata link and time it. You won't get 300MBps ..trust.
Uh.. that's the internal data rate, which is 3Gb/s, but that is NOT the transfer rate off the platters. You'll probably top out max at 100-120GB/sec on an empty 1 TB drive for the first 10-15% of the drive and it'll get slower as the drive fills up.
The 3Gb/sec is like sort of like saying my macbook says I'm connected to the internet at 1 Gig-E, so I must be able to surf to surf at 1 Gig-E connection. Well unfortunatly, that gigabit ethernet connection is connected through a router to Verizon FiOS and you'll really only get 20Mb connection.
It's a moot point anyways, since the current laptop drives lag far behind in sustained transfer rates that 3.5" desktop drives. Even if the eSATA drive could dish out 100MB/sec, the internal 2.5" drive probably can only do half that...
The 3Gb/sec is like sort of like saying my macbook says I'm connected to the internet at 1 Gig-E, so I must be able to surf to surf at 1 Gig-E connection. Well unfortunatly, that gigabit ethernet connection is connected through a router to Verizon FiOS and you'll really only get 20Mb connection.
It's a moot point anyways, since the current laptop drives lag far behind in sustained transfer rates that 3.5" desktop drives. Even if the eSATA drive could dish out 100MB/sec, the internal 2.5" drive probably can only do half that...
I'm going to be kind. Kingfish, please, PLEASE, stop now. Trust me on this.
[deleted]
