Moving External USB Drive to ESATA Case?

[Larry Lindstrom]

Hi Folks:

I recently purchased a Maxtor 1 GB Onetouch with a USB and Firewire
interface. The price was right, $100.00.

The salesman suggested ESATA, for a lot more money, but I'd never
heard of that standard and decided to go cheap.

I've since read a bit about ESATA, the interface is 3 times faster
than USB that this drive has. I don't know if that means this drive
would be 3 times faster if it had an ESATA interface.

Do you think it would be worth moving the drive to a case that with
an ESATA interface? My motherboard has a three SATA connectors that
aren't being used. Gigabyte offers a "SATA Bracket", which I assume
is a physical interface to an ESATA cable.

Or is this a drive tuned to the modest performance of the USB
interface?

Thanks
Larry

 

[Rod Speed]

I recently purchased a Maxtor 1 GB Onetouch with a USB
and Firewire interface. The price was right, $100.00.

The salesman suggested ESATA, for a lot more money,
but I'd never heard of that standard and decided to go cheap.

I've since read a bit about ESATA, the interface is 3 times faster
than USB that this drive has. I don't know if that means this
drive would be 3 times faster if it had an ESATA interface.

No it doesnt. You might be able to pick the speed difference with
some tasks in a proper double blind trial, but only with some stuff
like say moving 50GB of files from your PVR etc to it etc.

Do you think it would be worth moving the drive to a case that with an ESATA interface?

Really depends on what you use the drive for.

My motherboard has a three SATA connectors that
aren't being used. Gigabyte offers a "SATA Bracket",
which I assume is a physical interface to an ESATA cable.
Correct.

Or is this a drive tuned to the modest performance of the USB interface?

Nope, but the real difference in thruput is nothing like the 3 times difference in the interface speed.

 

[Larry Lindstrom]

No it doesnt. You might be able to pick the speed difference with
some tasks in a proper double blind trial, but only with some stuff
like say moving 50GB of files from your PVR etc to it etc.


Really depends on what you use the drive for.


Nope, but the real difference in thruput is nothing like the 3 times difference in the interface speed.

Thanks Rod:

This drive would be for external backup.

I'm running Shadowperfect on XP home, and will be running ufsbackup/
ufsrestore on Solaris.

It would be nice to trim some time off of these backups.

I appreciate your assistance.

Larry

 

[Rod Speed]

Larry Lindstrom wrote

Thanks Rod:

This drive would be for external backup.

I'm running Shadowperfect on XP home, and will be running ufsbackup/ ufsrestore on Solaris.

Never tried timing that with different drive speeds.

Some backup doesnt manage to wring out the full speed of USB, others can and so would be a bit faster.

BUT if you are doing the backup unattended, the difference can be academic in practice.

It would be nice to trim some time off of these backups.

I appreciate your assistance.

No problem, thats what these technical groups are for.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Hi Folks:

I recently purchased a Maxtor 1 GB Onetouch with a USB and Firewire
interface. The price was right, $100.00.

The salesman suggested ESATA, for a lot more money, but I'd never
heard of that standard and decided to go cheap.

I've since read a bit about ESATA, the interface is 3 times faster
than USB that this drive has. I don't know if that means this drive
would be 3 times faster if it had an ESATA interface.

Do you think it would be worth moving the drive to a case that with
an ESATA interface? My motherboard has a three SATA connectors that
aren't being used. Gigabyte offers a "SATA Bracket", which I assume
is a physical interface to an ESATA cable.

Or is this a drive tuned to the modest performance of the USB
interface?

Thanks
Larry

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Hi Folks:

I recently purchased a Maxtor 1 GB Onetouch with a USB and Firewire
interface. The price was right, $100.00.

The salesman suggested ESATA, for a lot more money, but I'd never
heard of that standard and decided to go cheap.

So just to clarify, you do or do not now currently have an existing
ESATA connector on your external drive? Just asking if you're asking
would it be worth your time to exchange the case or not?

I've since read a bit about ESATA, the interface is 3 times faster
than USB that this drive has. I don't know if that means this drive
would be 3 times faster if it had an ESATA interface.

Do you think it would be worth moving the drive to a case that with
an ESATA interface? My motherboard has a three SATA connectors that
aren't being used. Gigabyte offers a "SATA Bracket", which I assume
is a physical interface to an ESATA cable.

Or is this a drive tuned to the modest performance of the USB
interface?

A friend of mine has a WD MyBook with a triple interface,
USB/Firewire/ESATA. There was a thread about it a couple of months back.
So we were able to do test on all three types of interfaces. There was
practically no difference in speed between USB or Firewire. However,
ESATA was nearly twice as fast at transferring a large file as the other
two. The USB or Firewires were in the 20-25 MB/s range, whereas ESATA
was just under 40 MB/s (i.e. 38-39). This was also damn near as fast as
the internal SATA drives, which were just over 40 MB/s.

However, one of the big advantages of ESATA is that it's usually treated
just like an internal SATA connection. Same OS drivers, BIOS recognizes
it, etc. This also means that most SMART monitoring tools will be able
to monitor the health of your external drive just as easily as it can
internal drives. That should be very useful under Solaris, and somewhat
useful under Windows too. However, one thing we found out was that the
WD MyBook was weird and it actually didn't pass SMART info through the
ESATA, but did pass it through USB. I don't know if that's going to be
the case with your case, but it could. But usually ESATA would be
absolutely essential for SMART monitoring.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Larry Lindstrom]

So just to clarify, you do or do not now currently have an existing
ESATA connector on your external drive? Just asking if you're asking
would it be worth your time to exchange the case or not?




A friend of mine has a WD MyBook with a triple interface,
USB/Firewire/ESATA. There was a thread about it a couple of months back.
So we were able to do test on all three types of interfaces. There was
practically no difference in speed between USB or Firewire. However,
ESATA was nearly twice as fast at transferring a large file as the other
two. The USB or Firewires were in the 20-25 MB/s range, whereas ESATA
was just under 40 MB/s (i.e. 38-39). This was also damn near as fast as
the internal SATA drives, which were just over 40 MB/s.

However, one of the big advantages of ESATA is that it's usually treated
just like an internal SATA connection. Same OS drivers, BIOS recognizes
it, etc. This also means that most SMART monitoring tools will be able
to monitor the health of your external drive just as easily as it can
internal drives. That should be very useful under Solaris, and somewhat
useful under Windows too. However, one thing we found out was that the
WD MyBook was weird and it actually didn't pass SMART info through the
ESATA, but did pass it through USB. I don't know if that's going to be
the case with your case, but it could. But usually ESATA would be
absolutely essential for SMART monitoring.

        Yousuf Khan

Thanks Yousuf:

Doubling the performance of a backup or recivery seems
worthwhile.

I'll look into ESATA cases tomorrow.

By the way, it's a 1 TB drive, not a 1 GB drive.

I appreciate the effort Rod and you have taken to help me.

Larry

 

[Larry Lindstrom]

Thanks Yousuf:

  Doubling the performance of a backup or recivery seems
worthwhile.

  I'll look into ESATA cases tomorrow.

  By the way, it's a 1 TB drive, not a 1 GB drive.

  I appreciate the effort Rod and  you have taken to help me.

Its not as simple as plugging it in. You have to install the proper drivers
and configure the SATA interface for AHDI mode instead of IDE emulation mode
if you ever want that pseudo eSATA port to be hot swappable. Otherwise, youll
have to shutdown every time you want to unplug the drive or plug it in lest
you want data loss.[/QUOTE]

Thanks GMAN:

I'll check out Gigabyte drivers.

Larry

 

[Arno Wagner]

I actually replied to that thread not so long ago.

You were right, the WD My Books use an Oxford Semi chipset controller
for the USB, Firewire and eSATA bridges. Turns out that chipset also has
a built in RAID controller (check out the diagram in page 3 of the
datasheet you can find 'HERE'
(http://usbbridges.googlepages.com/Oxford_OXUF924DSA_Datasheet.pdf))
which is put to good use in the My Book Mirror series. I believe this is
the reason why SMART data is not being passed through: instead of a
direct connection when using the eSATA bridge, you get a logical volume
even though the RAID controler is handling a single drive.

That would indeed explain things.

This would also explain why the name of the drive changes from WD10EAVS
(actual drive model) in Device Manager when connected by USB to 'WD My
Book' when connected by eSATA.

Indeed. Seems it is cheaper to have just one chip that does it
all and then not use some of its capabiliies in some devices.

Arno

 

[Rod Speed]

It actually depends on how fast that Maxtor hard disk is. USB 2.0 will
give you an absolute maximum throughput of 35 MB/s, while eSATA is
only limited by the drive's maximum transfer speed.

I have two WD 1 TB My Book drives, one connected by USB and another by
eSATA. The *average* read speed of the WD10EAVS eSATA drive, as
measured by HD Tach, is 78.7 MB/s (with 100 MB/s maximum transfer
speed on the outer edges). This is nearly three times the speed you
would get from connecting the same drive via USB.

That doesnt mean you'll be able to pick it in a proper double blind trial
with most real world work like say playing media files from the drive tho.

And even with the backup he wants to use the drive for, if that is being
done timed and unattended, the better speed is completely academic too.

 

[bbbl67]

You were right, the WD My Books use an Oxford Semi chipset controller
for the USB, Firewire and eSATA bridges. Turns out that chipset also has
a built in RAID controller (check out the diagram in page 3 of the
datasheet you can find 'HERE'
(http://usbbridges.googlepages.com/Oxford_OXUF924DSA_Datasheet.pdf))
which is put to good use in the My Book Mirror series. I believe this is
the reason why SMART data is not being passed through: instead of a
direct connection when using the eSATA bridge, you get a logical volume
even though the RAID controler is handling a single drive.

According to that manual, the controller usually has two SATA
interfaces for two drives, but the second SATA interface can be
configured to emulate a fake drive so that it can be used as a host-
facing eSATA interface. So with the host-facing SATA and the two
existing Firewire and USB interface, you got yourself the
aforementioned triple-host interface. It also explains why you can't
coax any SMART data off of the eSATA, it's because all of the data
sent through the eSATA is faked.

Yousuf Khan

 

[YKhan]

What I'm curious about is: couldn't this be solved with a firmware
update to support SMART data passthrough?

I don't think there's enough demand for it. Or I guess they assume
you're more likely to be using it in USB mode.

I sent an email to Oxford Semi, but, of course (sigh), received no
answer. Western Digital first line of support, OTOH, replied asking me
to contact WD headquarters, as they had no idea. <grin>

Good old tech support.