Speed slow eSATA port

[jjhernandez]

Hello,
I have a toshiba laptop with a eSATA port, the port work fine but the speed is the same that a USB 2.0(24Mbps) and i have 2 HardDrive one hitashi(2.5",320Gb) and other toshiba(1Tb), i dont know what happen, i updated the bios too

 

[jjhernandez]

I need help please

 

[Hawkeye22]

Go to toshiba's web site and see if they have a chipset driver update for your laptop.

 

[jjhernandez]

Hi! thanks for your respond but i downloaded the latest chipset driver and updated my bios at last version and nothing happening.
I tested whith a live cd debian 11 and the same case

 

[GhislainG]

Is this an issue that happened recently or was it always like that? Have you contacted Toshiba?

 

[jjhernandez]

I've always had this problem since I have a laptop 2 years ago, if I have already sent emails and I have spoken too but they never give me a solution can always say that proves illogical things that I know will not work the same way the test and the result is not working.

 

[GhislainG]

How do you test the transfer speed? If it still is under warranty, you could send it back to get it fixed.

 

[jjhernandez]

i test the transfer with teracopy and other software for HD test speed, i dont have warranty 🙁

 

[GhislainG]

You didn't provide any info about your laptop, but is it supposed to be faster than USB 2.0 when connecting a hard disk through the eSATA interface? Are your external drives much faster when you connect them through eSATA on a different system? How long does it take to transfer a single large file (a couple GB is a good test)?

 

[jjhernandez]

Yes i have a Toshiba Satellite M305D-S4844 with eSATA port, i test with other system for example(Live cd Ubuntu) but the same speed, for example i transfer 4.7Gb(movie in iso file) and 10min to 15min more less

 

[GhislainG]

According to the specs, that laptop is equipped with "2 USB 2.0 ports with 1 eSATA/USB combo port". Since it's transfer speed isn't specifed, did Toshiba ever tell you that the eSATA port should be much faster than a USB 2.0 port? They clearly state that the USB 3.0 port is up to 10x as fast as a USB 2.0 port; therefore you should use the USB 3.0 port (and a USB 3.0 external hard disk) if transfer speed is important.

 

[jjhernandez]

looking for internet and when i talked with toshiba support they say the same, the eSATA port is faster than USB 2.0, eSATA transfer speed is "3 Gbps". I now this is not true but i want the more speed than USB 2.0

 

[GhislainG]

Since the laptop no longer is under warranty, there isn't much that you can do. However I'd give the USB 3.0 port a try. Have you tried your external drives on a different PC?

 

[jjhernandez]

Yes i tried external driver with other PC and speed is 60MBps, i moved 700Mb in 30 seconds

 

[GhislainG]

Have you tested the speed of your internal hard disk? How long does it take to copy a 1 GB file to the same hard disk?

 

[jjhernandez]

if i have copy/paste 700Mb speed is 26Mbps for other hand is move or cut/paste same file speed is immediate, only appears file in other side dont see speed in transfer in internal hard drive

 

[GhislainG]

Your internal hard disk is rather slow; therefore you can't expect high performance on the eSATA port. As a last test, check the speed (Sequential test) of an external hard disk using CrytalDiskMark: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/CrystalDiskMark.shtml It can also be used to test the internal hard disk if you want to compare with an external disk connected to the eSATA port.

 

[jjhernandez]

I think foud problem my internal driver is SATA I and external is SATA II, what do you think?

 

[GhislainG]

It isn't a problem as SATA I has a tranfer rate of 1.5 Gbit/s which is much faster than the hard disk transfer rate installed in that laptop. The problem most likely is that your internal drive is slow; that obviously affects the transfer rate when copying files between the internal and the external drives. What are the CrystalDiskMark results for both the internal and the external hard disks?

 

[jjhernandez]

Sorry GhislainG but where can find this option that would you like know in CrystalDiskInfo it have several option? i used HD Tune Pro.

 

[GhislainG]

HD Tune Pro is fine. What are the results for both the internal and external eSATA hard disks?

For CrystalDiskMark, select the drive to be tested (C: is the default) and click the Seq button. It could take a couple minutes before the Read and Write MB/s is displayed. You can run the other tests if you like, but we are mostly interested the sequential tests.

 

[jjhernandez]

Hi!
Internal Driver:

External Driver:

 

[GhislainG]

It proves that your external drive is fast when reading (way faster than USB 2.0). However the write speed is very low. Are you encrypting data or running an anti-virus that kills the write speed? Is the other external hard disk as slow when writing to it?

I tested an old and slow 80 GB drive connected through eSATA and I get 56.21 MB/s Read and 56.09 MB/s Write. I would expect over 90 MB/s when writing to your 1 TB drive.

 

[jjhernandez]

Hi! i tested again but now i enable cache:

after:

but when i moved 4Gb(Movie in ISO file) and speed is 36Mbps:

 

[GhislainG]

The speed is about right. You can't match benchmarks when moving a file; your transfer rate is approximately 80% of the maximum transfer rate of the internal drive which is fine. Is disk caching enabled for the internal drive?

To improve performance, you could replace the internal drive by a faster one (7200 RPM) or by a SSD.