eSATA Express54 Card Speed Report from External HDD

[eecon]

I recently tried an eSATA dual port Express54 wide card in my T61 connected to an external 3.5" 7200 RPM SATA-3.0 Gbps capable HDD in an enclosure that offers both eSATA and USB 2.0 ports.

I benchmarked the sustained transfer speeds to/from the external HDD (to my T61 internal Seagate 160GB 7200 RPM 7200.2 SATA HDD which is jumpered to limit it to SATA 1.5 mode). I tried it with the 3.5" external HDD's SATA mode jumper set both ways (1.5 and 3.0) via the eSATA port and found little or no difference in speeds ..... about 60 MB/sec sustained transfer rates in each direction which is more than double the 25 MB/sec rates using the USB connector found on the same external HDD enclosure. So far so good

Now I understand that T61/p motherboard SATA controllers for the main internal HDD are limited to only 1.5 Gbps for various reasons, although they are backwards compatible with SATA 3.0 Gbps HDDs if the HDD jumpers are set to limit speeds to 1.5 Gbps (like my factory installed Seagate 160GB 7200.2 unit that had it's jumper set to limit speed to 1.5 Gbps from the Lenovo factory). But that issue aside, my question is what about my eSATA Express card that is 3.0 Gbps capable and the external 3.0 Gbps HDD? If the internal T61/p SATA HDD controller was theoretically capable of true 3.0 Gbps performance (which it is not because of the reasons discussed above), would the Express slot really be capable of handling true 3.0 Gbps devices? Are Express slots really that fast?

Granted that the real world transfer speeds of 7200 RPM HDDs is well below even the the SATA 1.5 Gbps thresholds and that SATA 1.5 vs 3.0 really makes no difference, I'm still curious because I believe that true SATA 3.0 allows for auto-enabling of NCQ on the newer SATA 3.0 capable HDDs which can enhance overall performance depending on the types of files being transferred or being read.

Thanks.

[basketb]

A couple of questions:
1. exactly which express card did you use?
2. what benchmark program did you use?

[eecon]

A couple of questions:
1. exactly which express card did you use?
2. what benchmark program did you use?

A no-name brand from Fry's for about 40 bucks:

http://www.ppa-usa.com/products/pcmcia/1165.htm

The specs talk about it supporting Raid but I don't think it really does ... it just provides a pair of eSATA channels off my Express54 card slot .... they also have an Express34 version.

I used the old stopwatch method of timing two set baskets of files (one set large and one set small) that were copied back and forth. Not the most accurate method, but it clearly showed that eSATA was more than twice as fast as any of my other USB 2.0 3.5" external HDDs plus Acronis TI 11.0 now only takes 9 minutes to do a 35GB backup to the external HDD via eSATA instead of 25 minutes via USB 2.0

[yak]

ExpressCard slot has pins for two types of connection: PCIe or USB. This means that if you already exceeded USB speeds, yours must be using PCIe which should allow 3.0Gbps as long as the card supports it.

In theory at least.

-- EDIT --

Went out to check my theory and no, wikipedia says that ExpressCard supports max. 2.0Gbps in PCIe mode.

[eecon]

ExpressCard slot has pins for two types of connection: PCIe or USB. This means that if you already exceeded USB speeds, yours must be using PCIe which should allow 3.0Gbps as long as the card supports it.

In theory at least.

-- EDIT --

Went out to check my theory and no, wikipedia says that ExpressCard supports max. 2.0Gbps in PCIe mode.

Actually, according to the PCMCIA's official expresscard.org site, the current ExpressCard 1.x speed is a dual-simplex 2.5 Gbps differential serial link:

http://www.expresscard.org/web/site/standardsummary.jsp

I'm not sure why the wiki site says 2.0 Gbps thoughput.

[ronan_zj]

hi, do you need to buy the adapter to put the eSATA Express54 card in or PCMCIA slot?

[eecon]

hi, do you need to buy the adapter to put the eSATA Express54 card in or PCMCIA slot?

I'm not sure I fully understand your question ...... an Express54 adapter is like a cardbus card that is inserted into an Express54 slot. It slides into the ThinkPads upper cardbus slot. The lower slot is for standard older PCMCIA adapter cards.

Please note that not all ThinkPads come with a combination configuration (i.e. one Express54 slot and one PCMCIA slot). Some have two PCMCIA slots and some have a special 6 in 1 Flash Card reader in place of the the open Express54 slot.