Page 1 of 1
eSATA to Cardbus 32-bit adapter (Worth it?)
Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 11:16 pm
by iamdmc
So I finally got my external hard drive working with eSATA on my computers (Both Windows Vista PCs) after dealing with no eSATA for around a year and a half (ie since I made the jump from XP to Vista and a new mobo).
Now that I've tasted that sweet 60MB/s-80MB/s over eSATA (vs 20MB/s on USB2.0) I want the same for my laptop (please check my sig for details).
The card itself costs only $40, but I'm wondering if it'll be worth it. Does anyone have any experience with this sort of setup or feedback as to its limitations? Can I expect that 60MB/s transfer rate (or higher)?
Thanks!
Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 4:28 am
by aaa
Cardbus is 400 megabits. So I highly doubt you'll reach 60MB/s. Probably still twice as fast as USB though.
Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 11:19 am
by iamdmc
But if USB is 480megabits, then shouldn't it be faster?
Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 11:53 am
by SHoTTa35
iamdmc wrote:But if USB is 480megabits, then shouldn't it be faster?
Yeah, it should be.. but with all the overhead and stuff like that you get what you get. Most of the time the bus is capable of faster speeds but the chipsets in the external USB devices are slower than expected.
20 MBps = 160 Mbps
So Cardbus being 400Mbits would probably give you a max of 15MBps which is less than you are getting now. There are the ExpressCard versions but i don't know the bus limits on those. I am guessing 1Gbps but that could be waay off
Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 3:35 pm
by aaa
The slowness of USB has less to do with USB itself, and more to do with the cheap components they use to make these things. Case in point: there exists a 33MB/s flash drive.
The hope is, if the makers of the eSATA card didn't cheap out like most USB makers did, you'd be able to get most of the 400mbps available, ie 40-50MB/s.
IIRC, if ExpressCards are basically PCIe 1x, then the bandwidth is 2Gbps.
Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2008 4:27 pm
by Zender
USB is by design a bad interface for high-speed devices, it's only been extended to this use after Apple threatened it's gonna charge for firewire.
ExpressCard is in fact a two-bus connection, allows the card to use either USB or PCI express x1 (also both I think). PCIe x1 allows data transmission rate of 2.5Gbps (=320MBps), so unless you're hit by some problems other ThinkPad T6x users reported (slow CardBus, not sure about the ExpressCard), eSATA should be very worth it.