eSATA external hard drive speeds vs USB 3.0

[scw831]

Hello everyone, I just had a quick question about the eSATA port on computers. I was wondering whether I should invest in an external hard drive that is eSATA or USB 3.0? It's primary use will be as a back up and place to store my music and videos, and I have additional computers with both ports so the primary thing I am concerned about is speeds.

I looked up various articles already about speeds and found quite a variety of answers, a lot of which conflicted in one way or another and were fairly dated so I wasn't sure if changes may have occurred.

I also have thunderbolt ports that I may be willing to purchase an external hard drive that utilizes those granted it is actually worth the higher price; from what I have read though that seems a bit over priced yet and too new to have real quality tested products for.

Finally I would just like to know if there are any brands or models in specific that you would suggest buying.

Thanks for all the help and advice I appreciate it.

 

[Sn1992-1361850]

eSATA has always been considered a professional interface when compared with USB. Seen in systems like professional workstations and graphics artists' high-end PCs, eSATA has the benefit of being designed to work with hard drives primarily, while USB needs to be compatible with many other functions (mouse, keyboard, audio interface, charging, etc.). You'll find it was the "fastest" throughput interface (1.5 Gbps to 6 Gbps) on most PCs before the advent of USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt (10 Gbps). Each eSATA device connects on a one-to-one basis with the PC, so you're not sharing the signal via an internal or external hub. That way the PC's motherboard chipset only has to deal with one drive at a time, and not with multiple devices simultaneously, as with USB. Before USB 3.0, powered eSATA (aka, eSATA+USB 2.0) was the way to get a fast portable drive working with a laptop without having to use a power adapter for the drive.


Below is a link for a combined hard disk that provide u both the benifits of esata plus usb 3.0 as it has both of these connectors

http://www.amazon.com/MiniPro-External-eSATA-Portable-Drive/dp/B003MRI398


Its for jst 129 usd


But if u wanna leave everything behind and want thunderbolt which is the fastest i.e. 10gbps


So spent 197usd for 1 tb buffalo usb3.0 plus thunderbolt conncting harddrive
The link is
http://www.amazon.com/BUFFALO-MiniStation-Thunderbolt-Portable-Drive/dp/B008D4X9UI/ref=sr_1_8?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1373894706&sr=1-8&keywords=Thunderbolt