eSATA

So I set up my SATA II hard drive in my eSATA enclosure, formatted, blah blah blah, computer recognizes it. Now...I have it hooked up using eSATA, and the data transfer speeds are only ~20MB/s. It's a 7200 RPM drive, 32 MB Cache, and I took the jumper out to enable the full 3gb/s transfer speed. I'm pretty sure my laptop supports the 3gb/s and is SATA II, because I heard eSATA is ONLY SATA II. [b15c1ab3293]But why are the transfer speeds so slow? Why can't I run Seagate diagnostics on the drive?[/b15c1ab3293] It says the tests fail every time I go to run SeaTools. Yet, the drive is functioning properly, displaying 465GB of space. (

The internal drive on my laptop is also a 3gb/s drive.

I have an ASUS G1S laptop.

Also, I checked in the BIOS, eSATA is enabled, however, the hard drive is found as "IDE" which is strange. I downloaded the latest drivers from ASUS for eSATA. If I boot with the external on, plugged into eSATA, there's major lag. If I turn it on after boot, there's a few seconds of lag. It doesn't make sense. (

Help please!!!

You will never approach full bandwidth on a single desktop SATA drive. For that matter, you'll never even reach it on a PATA drive either. Maybe the occasional burst will hit close to 80MBps or so, but nothing sustained, and that's nowhere near reaching 3GBps.

In a normal, consumer desktop installation, you will see no practical throughput difference between the SATA and PATA interfaces. Now, depending on other drive specs (cache, spindle speed, aerial density, etc.), you WILL see a difference between drives. But bus bandwidth? Nope. All other drive specs being equal, desktop SATA is no faster than PATA.

SATA speed only shows significant performance boosts in server environments, with lots of users and lots of drives. A PATA bus would get saturated and bog down much quicker than the SATA bus will, which has a lot more headroom.

The real benefits for SATA on a desktop machine are

(a) neater and easier cabling, which also improves airflow through the case when compared to flat 40-pin PATA cables

(b) easier mobo layout for the mobo mfg (they can fit more connectors on the mobo in a smaller space

(c) eSATA. There is no equivalent plug & play PATA external interface, so the only other options are USB and Firewire. eSATA blows both of them away and gives you internal speed in an external drive

(d) last but not least, you really have no choice since SATA is the new standard. PATA is going the way of the dinosaur, and expansion options are limited. Most systems today offer 4-8 or even more SATA connections, while offering only a single PATA connector.

As far as your Seagate Diagnostics, I have no idea. Perhaps it's not written to recognize eSATA interfaces. Wouldn't be the first time, a lot of the drive manufacturers' tools are crappy, and IMO Seagate has pretty much always been crappy. I'm NOT a Seagate fan, if you couldn't tell. ;)

But it shouldn't be running THIS slow. Is 20MB/s slow? Does this slow speed have to do with me formatting it via "Quick Format?"

Also, because my G1S has the eSATA built in, I can use it via Plug and Play.

What about all the other problems I'm having too?

And I was saying gb not GB. So ~ 384MB/s I was hoping to get.

Quick Format has nothing to do with drive performance.

20MB/s isn't that fast, but it isn't that slow either. It could be a lot of things, including fragmentation (unlikely on a fresh format), the method of testing, a crappy SATA interface in either the enclosure or the mobo, a bad cable, etc. etc.

What other problems? I addressed both issues you indicated in your post.

If you mean the BIOS reporting the drive as "IDE" I wouldn't sweat it. SATA drives [bb300e7db77]are[/bb300e7db77] IDE drives, as are PATA drives. Unfortunately too many users and vendors use IDE to mean PATA exclusively, which is not the case.

So if I got a SIIG eSATA cable instead of the eSATA cable that came with the enclosure...it should go faster?

I was transferring a folder from my internal hard drive on my laptop, to the connected eSATA hard drive. It's about 2 GB, and it was taking over 3 minutes. Other people report having this same hard drive transferring an 8 GB file in 56 seconds.

No, I didn't say it [i00ecdfea0b]would[/i00ecdfea0b] go faster with another cable. I just suggested the cable as one of many possible explanations.

Ah. Do you recommend I get a SIIG cable?

Also, I was just transferring a folder over, and my entire laptop FROZE. Completely, I had to do a hard shut down.

Edit Ugh...I just tried copying the same folder again, and when it was at 50 seconds left...it froze at the same point...and I had to do a hard shut down. What's going on?! (

http//stevenharman.net/blog/archive/2007/07/11/hardware-problems-my-esata--sata-ii-enclosure-wont-play.aspx

I was also reading that. So do you think getting a really secure, shielded cable, this won't happen anymore?

Also, my enclosure got a rating of 9.5/10.

http//www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1032/6

Personally, unless your existing cable is defective, kinked, or extra extra long, I don't think a new cable will help you. But it's your dime...

I have no experience with eSATA on laptops -- being as it's a somewhat new feature for that platform, perhaps all the kinks aren't worked out. shrug

I wanted to ask, why aren't you a Seagate fan? All there were, were raves about this hard drive.

http//www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148288

Don't get dmorris started on seagate lol. You should be paying him for all the questions he answers for you though.

So did you set the jumper to SATA I like the guy did in the article you linked? Why don't you try that first?

I have the seagate freeagent pro, and I didn't want to buy an esata cable (decent ones are kinda pricey) so I tried it out with a cheap esata to sata adapter I got. I hooked it up to my mobo directly with a regular SATA cable (obviously not shielded) and I got results similar to yours (slowdowns, locking up). I do wonder if it could be interference affecting the cable. Maybe I'll shield it with some foil just to test it out.

I might buy the same enclosure as yours mostly to get the bracket and cable.

[quotec5adcfae30="hehehhehe"]Don't get dmorris started on seagate lol. You should be paying him for all the questions he answers for you though.

So did you set the jumper to SATA I like the guy did in the article you linked? Why don't you try that first?

I have the seagate freeagent pro, and I didn't want to buy an esata cable (decent ones are kinda pricey) so I tried it out with a cheap esata to sata adapter I got. I hooked it up to my mobo directly with a regular SATA cable (obviously not shielded) and I got results similar to yours (slowdowns, locking up). I do wonder if it could be interference affecting the cable. Maybe I'll shield it with some foil just to test it out.

I might buy the same enclosure as yours mostly to get the bracket and cable.[/quotec5adcfae30]
The enclosure is great. I love it. Buy it now so you get $10 off.
http//www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817173040

(When people complain about the stand for the enclosure, how it's loose, they must've fixed it, because my stand fits tightly on the enclosure. ))

If you do shield it, let me know the results.

Ugh, and putting back the jumper? LOL. It was the biggest pain in the ass to get it out. The area is so thin. I tried a corn holder, tweezer, etc, didn't work. So I called Seagate, and of course I get some out-sourced guy, and he's like LOL USE A BALLPOINT PEN. And I was like okay, bye. So then I tried a paper clip and it worked, and I almost killed the pins. But maybe I guess I don't have a choice. I don't know. \

Also, I don't know if this has to do with anything, but I turned indexing off on my drive, and it nearly hit 40MB/s when transferring a 40 GB folder. It's still transferring so I don't know if my computer is going to lock up or not. P

Edit Folder transfer complete (415 files, 45 GB). Took about 15-20 minutes, stayed at nearly 36-39MB/s the entire time. )