Thinkpads Forum

have a T42P and T60p running XPSP3 which I'm thinking to buy one of the new USB 3.0 PCMCIA cards and cut down on the time wasted for external backups done with USB 2.0 ports that the machines have.

Here are a couple of them I looked, any ideas if USB 3.0 PCMCIA cards WILL WORK with the T42P and T60P

Thanks.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... FP:US:1123

http://www.meritline.com/usb-3-0-expres ... ce=fghdac&

The PCMCIA / PCCARD interface itself has a data xfer speed limit that is below that of USB 3.0. So far, I have not been able to find the transfer rate for 32bit PCCARD. But the inferred xfer rate is 3x the 16bit rate, 3x 160Mb/s = 480Mb/s. 480Mb/s is the same as rate as USB 2.0. So you will not be able to take full advantage of the USB 3.0 speed potential.

Also the sustained data transfer to/from the disk platter is another limiting factor.
A SLOW drive inside of a FAST case will not do you any good. So watch out for the "cheap" external drives.

ac12 wrote:The PCMCIA / PCCARD interface itself has a data xfer speed limit that is below that of USB 3.0. So far, I have not been able to find the transfer rate for 32bit PCCARD. But the inferred xfer rate is 3x the 16bit rate, 3x 160Mb/s = 480Mb/s. 480Mb/s is the same as rate as USB 2.0. So you will not be able to take full advantage of the USB 3.0 speed potential.

Also the sustained data transfer to/from the disk platter is another limiting factor.
A SLOW drive inside of a FAST case will not do you any good. So watch out for the "cheap" external drives.

Thanks that perfectly answered my question, so no use in buying any of the USB 3.0 PCMCIA ADAPTERS since the top data transfer speed of PCMCIA is even below USB 2.0

Silverstone makes a HD enclosure with both USB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces.
http://www.silverstonetek.com/raven/pro ... 01&area=en

Several manufacturers offer an ExpressCard with a eSATA interface.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... &x=21&y=17

Why aren't more folks using eSATA while doing their HDD backups?

I opine that ac12 did not answer your question at all.

I have not heard of any CardBus USB 3.0 host controllers. (If you find one, please tell me about it!) I know that one OEM makes a USB 3.0 host controller in form of PCI card, and that can go in a ThinkPad Dock II for use by T42 or T43.

T60 has one ExpressCard slot, and so does T43. They can use ExpressCard USB 3.0 cards, which you have found. T42 does not have ExpressCard.

CardBus uses the 32-bit PCI bus. As I understand, data rate (at 33 MHz) is 1.06 Gbps, or 132 Mo/s. That is plenty fast enough for USB 2.0 Hi-Speed.

behar1 wrote:no use in buying any of the USB 3.0 PCMCIA ADAPTERS

In my experience, the bottleneck of Hi-Speed transfers is the host controller. Intel's USB 2.0 hosts got better little by little with each new ICH, and Intel's implementation has been about the best there was. But I heard that a USB 3.0 host controller has better Hi-Speed performance than any 2.0 host, better than even Intel ICH. Therefore, to get the most out of 2.0 devices, a 3.0 host controller is a good investment.

Thanks for all the replies, all I wanted to do is use my External USB 3.0 WD passport plug & play just like it works with USB 2.0.
And I thought of the USB 3.0 Pcmcia adapter as the simplest solution, but the Pcmcia speed limits eliminated that.

I really don't want to buy any card bus adapters or external enclosures or any interfaces.

Thanks again for all the replies.

automobus brought up a good point.
I answered your question specifically re PCMCIA/PCCARD w/o knowing the specs for the 2 computers you referenced.

According to the computer specs that I just found, the T42p has a CardBus (PCMCIA) slot, so you are interface limited to approx 480Mb/s. The T60p however has an ExpressCard slot.

ExpressCard-1 is 2.5Gb/s, ExpressCard-2 is 5Gb/s, USB 3.0 is 5Gb/s.
I do not know which of the 2 ExpressCard interfaces the T60p has.

So, the T60p has a different and FASTER expansion interface (than the T42p), which would make sense for USB 3.0.