SATA - USB2 question

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~bogus name

Will an expernal USB2 SATA drive, work on a laptop
that has a 40GB EIDE drive in it with a USB1 port?
Thanks,
al
 
~bogus name said:
Will an expernal USB2 SATA drive, work on a laptop
that has a 40GB EIDE drive in it with a USB1 port?
Thanks,
al
Click to expand...

The equipment in this case, will still operate. But
the transfer rate for the data, will be about 1 megabyte
per second. To transfer a 1GB file will take 16 minutes.
You'll rapidly lose interest, in a USB 1.1 transfer rate.

If you use the external drive for backup purposes, the
backup will take a long time to run.

Some laptops have a PCCard (PCMCIA) slot. You can plug
a higher performance interface card in there, and arrange
a faster transfer rate. You have to be a little careful
though, depending on the age of the laptop.

http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimage/15-124-011-04.jpg

There are also adapters that have SATA ports on them.
One person notes about a 15MB/sec transfer rate, so
the PCMCIA or Cardbus interface, is a limitation still.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16839113007

There are external drives that connect via Ethernet.
If the laptop has 100BT Ethernet, that could copy at
a maximum of 12.5MB/sec. So you could use this, if the
laptop has absolutely no slots on it. Still pretty slow,
but could be a bit better than the USB 1.1 rate of about
1MB/sec.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16817348011

Most all of the solutions above, have issues of one sort or another.
The Ethernet NAS box tends to overheat and die. The PCCard solutions
may not operate at full speed, or may have compatibility issues.
You have to understand exactly what kind of slot is on the laptop,
before buying something for it.

HTH,
Paul
 
thanks Paul, for the therough explaination.
Transfer rate won't be an issure here so the USB1 port
is OK. I wasn't sure if you had to have SATA controllers
installed in the laptop or not if you connected a SATA external drive to it.
So the SATA controller must be in the external drive's interface card. Is
that it?

al
 
~bogus name said:
thanks Paul, for the therough explaination.
Transfer rate won't be an issure here so the USB1 port
is OK. I wasn't sure if you had to have SATA controllers
installed in the laptop or not if you connected a SATA external drive to it.
So the SATA controller must be in the external drive's interface card. Is
that it?

al
Click to expand...

External enclosures come in different flavors. There are SATA to USB.
There are IDE to USB. The chip inside the enclosure takes care
of the details. On the USB side of things, the USB will declare
itself as a "USB Mass Storage" device. WinXP SP1 or later, will
have a driver for that USB class. (There is also a driver someone wrote
to make it possible to deal with USB Mass Storage in Win98. While this
site happens to host the driver, they may not have written it.)

NUSB USB Mass Storage for Win98SE
http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/win98se-usb-mass-storage-drivers.php

A second protocol that is used, is called MTP. Not every device
that might be considered "Mass Storage", has to use the USB Mass Storage
class. So music players for example, might require different treatment
(and have different OS support), than a simple external disk enclosure.
The driver installation is also acquired in a different way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol

In addition to enclosures, which may choose to power and
protect a drive, there are also simple adapter devices which
can be used temporarily with raw storage devices. If you have
a lot of drive mechanisms, and don't want to buy an enclosure
for each one, something like this might be more practical.
This one has SATA and IDE connectors on the side, so can handle
both types. (See the picture link on the page, to get a
better idea of what accessories are included.)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812195005

Paul
 
There are external drives that connect via Ethernet.
If the laptop has 100BT Ethernet, that could copy at
a maximum of 12.5MB/sec. So you could use this, if the
laptop has absolutely no slots on it. Still pretty slow,
but could be a bit better than the USB 1.1 rate of about
1MB/sec.
Click to expand...

In my experience transferring files via ethernet is pretty quick -
actually a lot quicker than USB2. I can move a 1GB file from one
computer to another in about 2 minutes. At 12.5MB/sec that should have
taken nearly 8 minutes.
 
In my experience transferring files via ethernet is pretty quick -
actually a lot quicker than USB2. I can move a 1GB file from one
computer to another in about 2 minutes. At 12.5MB/sec that should have
taken nearly 8 minutes.
Click to expand...
Whoops, my maths just went AWOL there. Obviously 12.5MB/sec would
result in 80 secs for 1GB. 8-)
 
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