I recently got a CalDigit FASTA-6GU3 although I have been using eSata for years, it certainly is not 6G, either 1.5 or 3G, I really don't know how to check, how can I check the top speed of my eSata external hard drives and cables? they just say eSata with no hint to which revision it is in.
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How to identify eSata cable version I/II/III
- Thread starter cbt3
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The drives should have a model number which when entered into your search engine will tell you its specs. You can get this number either off the physical drive somewhere or in the System Report in the About This Mac menu item.
While there are high quality and not-so-high quality cables the cable spec is the same so a SATAI cable works just fine for a SATAIII device and visa-versa.
To do the actual testing there's about 6 or 8 drive speed testers out there. Some are free and some are commercial and I recommend using more than one or two - as they will report different results in different ways. You can also do some DIY testing with just a stopwatch and some sample files. Drag and drop a folder of 5,000 1K files you cloned into existence or "Archive" a large folder to create a large file for the same test. If you Duplicate or copy file(s) to the same HDD keep in mind that it has to both read and write the file(s) in sequence - and it tries to do one full file at a time. Read all of one (if it fits in RAM) and then write it, read the next and so on.
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