Seagate 500 GB External Hard Drive Goes eSATA

[pschmid]

Seagate enters the external SATA market with a bang: the 500 GB model has lots of capacity, and better performance than any USB or Firewire drive.

 

[1Tanker]

Seagate enters the external SATA market with a bang: the 500 GB model has lots of capacity, and better performance than any USB or Firewire drive.

Bad link. :? One too many .com's.

 

[CNeufeld]

I found the article interesting, but how difficult would it have been to find a motherboard with an eSATA connector to test your theory of the slow access time?

Also, I'd be very curious to see the % CPU utilitization, especially compared to an external USB drive. While I love my external USB drive, the performance hit with it is quite high. Theoretically, the eSATA should not have the same limitations. I do wish they would have provided power connectors on the eSATA as well, but that's a totally different issue. I just hate hauling around another power brick, which is why my external drive is only a 2.5" one.

Clint

 

[judahr]

I would love to know if this is compatible with Scientific Atlanta's 8300HD. Maybe that is one for DenGuru.

 

[CNeufeld]

BTW, if you send me the drive, I'll run the benchmarks on my system (with native eSATA connector as well).

Clint

 

[Talon]

Interesting article. I was in the market for external storage and this sounds like a good choice.

One thing that I instantly thought when I started reading the article was how Seagate is jumping right on the eSATA bandwagon practically right after MB makers put it on their boards. Now where is my SATA optical drive love? Plextor is too costly for what you get and the standard has been out for quite a while now.

I realize IDE to SATA conversion is a bit more complex than the move from SATA to eSATA because its a different standard altogether but its been out so long now that this article just reminded me of how certain tech is lagging behind the curve as it were. /end rant

Oh well maybe they'll get mass SATA opticals out by the time the next standard comes out.

 

[9tendo]

Nice to see more eSATA support! I have an ASUS A8N32 SLI Deluxe with 1 eSATA 300 port built-in. Connected to it I have a Western Digital SE16 500MB SATA2 hard drive housed in a Nexstar SATA2/eSATA enclosure. It's ridiculously fast compared to my internal IDE drive. Unfortunately it's close to full and looks like I'll need to purchase another external drive. Does anyone know if this Seagate has any fans built in? My Nexstar does not and gets very hot.

 

[foshizzle]

I think the min, avg, and max speeds on the graphs are flipped for both Seagates (internal and external) because it looks to me that the min speed is actually higher than the avg and max...which obviuosly isn't possible.

Maybe I'm reading them wrong, but I don't think so. Anyone else notice this?

 

[jee_are]

Yeah, I think they just mixed up the two.

There seems to be quite a difference between the min and max transfer rates when compared to the other drives on the chart. Does anyone know if this is native to the new eSATA or SATA in general? Or is this just related to the drive's performance?

 

[Ram11]

"Compare this to the newest SATA standard, which can handle theoretical bandwidth of 300 Gbit/s!"

I thought the bandwidth of SATA 300 was 3.0 Gbits/sec

 

[nukemaster]

Those access times do indeed suck.....my promise internal card has times of like 14.1 or something....and thats the.... This is odd.....

Good article

 

[wsbsteven]

"Compare this to the newest SATA standard, which can handle theoretical bandwidth of 300 Gbit/s!"

I thought the bandwidth of SATA 300 was 3.0 Gbits/sec

"SATA 3Gb/s interface speed enables up to 300MB/s data transfer rates. "

It isn't 3gig a second like it implies.

 

[Oldguy]

Have the same mobo and use the 300gb version of the seagate to do complete disk backups of twin raptor 150's in raid 0. Had to use it a couple of times for restore when I managed to corrupt a few oblivion files during a mod session and noticed no difference in access times from my old internal sata backup drive. If the 500 performs in a similiar manner, this is the real deal.

a8n32sli deluxe

 

[Codesmith]

A BYTECC BT-300 USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA Adapter will convert SATA to USB.

You still need to convert eSATA to SATA which can be done with parts from a

Sabrent Model SATA-ES1P Internal SATA to eSATA External Host Bracket Cable

Combined they should let you access a eSATA drive from any PC with a USB port.

 

[Ram11]

"Compare this to the newest SATA standard, which can handle theoretical bandwidth of 300 Gbit/s!"

I thought the bandwidth of SATA 300 was 3.0 Gbits/sec

"SATA 3Gb/s interface speed enables up to 300MB/s data transfer rates. "

It isn't 3gig a second like it implies.


There was a typo in the original article. The 300Gbps has now been corrected to 3Gbps.

3Gbps(3 giga BITS per second) approximates to 300MBps(300 mega Bytes per second)

 

[yyrkoon]

Nice to see more eSATA support! I have an ASUS A8N32 SLI Deluxe with 1 eSATA 300 port built-in. Connected to it I have a Western Digital SE16 500MB SATA2 hard drive housed in a Nexstar SATA2/eSATA enclosure. It's ridiculously fast compared to my internal IDE drive. Unfortunately it's close to full and looks like I'll need to purchase another external drive. Does anyone know if this Seagate has any fans built in? My Nexstar does not and gets very hot.

Normally, boards that have an eSATA port on the I/O panel have, an SIL 3132 SATA controller as well. This means you COULD use this motherbaord with a port multiplier, and connect 5 external SATA HDDs to this port, and potentially get 3GB/s speeds from the external array.

For eSATA, I would NEVER use a PCI card, but instead, I would buy a expansion slot conversion 'kit', which basicly plugs directly into a motherboard SATA port, and gives you eSATA from the back of your PC. In other words, full speed external disks Of course, as per eSATA specifications, cable length is limited to 3 meters, but not that it matters much.

Personally, I would get this kit from Seagate MAYBE if they put in a PCIE card instead, but PCIE 1x is bandwidth limited to what ? 2.5GB ? Not that it matters, because a single drive will never hit 2.5GB/s (312.5MB/s) anyhow . . .

 

[Codesmith]

FYI converting regular SATA to eSATA doesn't result in real eSATA.

Real eSATA transmits a strong signal and accepts a weak one in return doublign the cable lenght from 1 to 2 meters.

Also many enternal enclosure use SATA rather than eSATA, so you need to be careful because there are also bracket adpaters and controller cards with plain old SATA.

Currently I use a Bytecc enclosure that takes an IDE drive and supports SATA (no e) and USB.

 

[DougBob]

Yes you are correct and anyone else that finds it is correct.
Thank God, I couldn't believe everyone else is just rattling on and didn't notice it.
The min and max are incorrectly switched on the drive results. I'm kind of disappointed this was posted this way and wasn't caught during the article review before the posting.
On another note, call me anal, but shouldn't this posting be under hardware>storage and not memory. I guess it just slipped thru the cracks.

 

[skinzzz]

i have the following scenario, please suggest me if it is advisible to use this drive under mentioned scenario or not ??

domain server / AD
150 users.
all users will save the data of upto 500 mb each on this seagate esata drive.

if seagate esata is not advisible then kindly advise some other options.
thanks.

 

[pmeinl]

Concerning the slow access time: somewhere on the internet I read that the disk comes with quiet access mode enabled. If that is causing the problem, one should be able to change the setting with a Seagate tool.

 

[jeffn1]

I just bought one of these as a sample drive for my DAW. I wonder if I am screwed. I will install it soon.

It seems the article should have dealt more squarely with the role of the access time on sample streaming. I would think this could create a real problem and, perhaps, make it unusable for this purpose.

Any other experience/thoughts with this?

jeffn1