using a pci-e sata controller

[rbsrao79]

So far I've seen this thread has talked about using the pci-e slot for an extra video card? How about a pci-e sata controller? That way we could lump a nice 750gb storage (with a sata enclosure) for the laptop to use when docked.

It would be quite useful to do the following

1. Scheduled R&R backups
2. VMWare'd systems
3. Pics/movies that are more often stored then scene
4. mp3 repository


We could do 3&4 over a USB drive/enclosure, but it would be great to have sata bandwidth for 1 & 2. Would anybody with a dock be able to test this out ?

Rajeev

[freakwave]

Hi Rajeev,

was thinking about this as well. But there are also esata pcmcia and express cards available, so with this you solution would also be mobile. I was thinking about getting a really fast sata drive (e.g. raptor) putting it into a sata enclosure and connect to one of these cards. Should be a great vmware performance. Unfortunately I have not seen any benchmarks yet on how these adapters perform.

Regards,

Wolfgang

[darrenf]

FWIW, I installed an ExpressCard with two eSATA ports and love it. It's really tiny though (1/2 the width of a PCMCIA card).

-darren

[rbsrao79]

Thats strange, I thought I was replying to

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=22358.

Moderator, could you connect this post to that thread ?


Wolfgang, I thought about express card sata controllers but had two issues.

1. The drives them selves are not gonna be portable so unless I kept connecting to other peoples drives, there would no need to use up the slot on a sata controller. Instead, I would use it for compact flash/sd card readers. Some people don't mind carrying multiple pcmcia/express cards with them outside the laptop but I do.


2. I'm not sure how hotpluggable e-sata is. removing a pcmcia without unmounting could be quite dangerous even in windows. On the other hand, with the dock, you are kind of forced into following the undock procedure which would presumably force an unmount.

This is slightly off topic, but incidently linux (or atleast the stable kernel variants) don't support the hot/warm plug function of e-sata yet.

Back to the topic...Given that pci-1x supports 2.5 Gbps, the dock should support the theoretical 300 mBps limit of sata II. This would beat the the ultraslim bay which is little better then usb (34mBps).

Rajeev

[darrenf]

A few thoughts:

eSATA drives are as portable as USB drives. They do require external power if that's what you're referring to but they are much more more portable than a docking station.

The eSATA card that I purchased does support hot-plugging, as do all eSATA controllers that I've looked at (PCI and ExpressCard).

2.5Gbps<300MBps but I don't think drives work fast enough to run at SATA II speeds right now anyway. Of course, I don't think that either can transfer data at their top bus rate.

Where did the ultrabay bus rate come from? That's one that I haven't seen mentioned here before. What is the bottleneck? 34mBps is a bummer but that's not a huge bottleneck at present. The 7200RPM SATA drive in my T60 (primary - native SATA support) gives a max linear read rate of 50MBps and that's with the cache in full effect.

-darren

[RonS]

If anyone installs a PCI-e SATA controller, please benchmark the drive (HDTach, HDTune, etc) and report your findings here. Drives mounted in the Advanced Dock's ultrabay are bandwidth limited to about 34 MB/sec. I'm guessing that that limitation applies to the entire dock.

[rbsrao79]

Hi Darren,
Well, when I meant portable, I just meant size. I don't picture myself carrying around 3.5" drives + enclosure. They would just sit at home (hence making a sata controller card appropriate for the dock rather then sata-expresscard), but thats just a personal preference.

The only installation of pci-e esata controller didn't give me the impresion it supported hot(un)plugging. Let me explain :

Disclaimer : This is not my area of expertise, so this information is subject to correction.

When the drive was mounted, I noticed that windows xp (Device Manager->DiskDrives->Policies) did not give an option to "Optimize for removal" as it does for usb mounted drives (the option was greyed out). Just unplugging the drive could cause a cache write failure...meaning its not hot-unpluggable.I didn't see a "Safely Remove Device" either. Hence it wasn't warm-unpluggable either.

The 34MBps limit was published in RonS's findings.

2.5gbps = (2.5 * 1024/8) mBps = 320 mBps isn't it ?

Rajeev

[rbsrao79]

Err, the smileys messed my last message.

"2.5gbps = (2.5 * 1024 / 8 mBps = 320 mBps isn't it ? "

[darrenf]

When used with reference to storage, a bit is indeed 1/8th of a byte. When used with reference to communication, a bit is 1/10th of a byte. I think the origins of this go back to modems which typically transmitted a minimum of 8 data bits, one stop bit and one parity bit per byte of data, resulting in a 10:1 ratio. Of course, even then a byte could be 7 bits and parity could be eliminated for a total of 8 bits. I think it just stuck. We live in the metric age after all.

Hard drive vendors, of course, live in a world all their own where they refer to storage in base-10 terms to inflate the stated capacity of their drives. Never let the marketing department write specs.

I just installed my Addonics Model ADEXC34-2E eSATA ExpressCard32 and connected it to an eSATA enclosure housing a Seagate 200GB drive, 7200RPM, 8M cache. Using Roadkill's Disk Speed version 1.1, I measured the following rates:

Linear Read: 60.8969 MB/s
Random Read: 3.4162 MB/s
Access Time: 7.65ms
Overall Score: 8095

This is in line with the score I see for an internally-connected SATA drive in a desktop PC. The scores on my ThinkPad's main SATA drive (Lenovo-provided Hitachi 100GB, 7200RPM) are:

Linear Read: 49.6827 MB/s
Random Read: 2.7525 MB/s
Access Time: 9.31ms
Overall Score: 5443

While the external drive was mounted I did have the option to Optimize for Quick Removal.

-darren

[rbsrao79]

Ah ok. I got it, so it should be divide by 10 rather then 8.

The card I saw I think was a SIIG pci-e card (not a expresscard). So may be the driver didn't support hot plugging.

So, the t60 express card slot supports atleast 60 mBps. It would be strange if the docking station restricted to 34mBps.

Rajeev

[darrenf]

FWIW, I connected the same external drive used in my eSATA test but this time over USB 2.0 (it's a cool enclosure -- takes both PATA and SATA drives, has USB and eSATA ports). The results were:

Linear Read: 29.7865 MB/s
Random Read: 3.1554 MB/s
Access Time: 8.25ms
Overall Score: 3731.

Not bad. I would have expected more bandwidth to have been wasted with control signalling.

RonS, do you know whether drives mounted in the UltrabaySlim port on the ThinkPad itself suffer the same 34MBps limit? Since the UltraBaySlim can take a PATA HDD over the same connector that the SATA caddy uses (with no translation hardware), I wonder if the port is PATA (would make sense given that it's usually used for optical drives) and the SATA caddy adapts the drive to the PATA bus.

This would explain why the choice of SATA drives usable in the UltraBay Slim adapter is limited like it was in the T43 which used bus translation on the primary drive.

Further, if UltraBay Slim devices are all exclusively PATA, the dock would have to support the same bus and would also have this limitation.

rbsrao79, getting back to your original question, that would make a PCIe eSATA card your best choice (I'm assuming here that the dock doesn't have room for an internal hard drive -- does it?).

One caveat. I just installed a PCI SATA/eSATA card in a legacy machine. The SII card that I installed said that it supported RAID, but I ignored this because I didn't need RAID. What I discovered is that one HAD to use RAID with this card, even if it was an array of one drive. This was unusable to me as it would make the drive unmountable on a non-RAID controller.

Fortunately, the BIOS was flashable and I found the BIOS used on the non-RAID variant of that card. After flashing the card I was able to use it without RAID getting in the way. I wonder if I could have saved a few bucks by ordering it without RAID in the first place.

-darren

[rbsrao79]

Darren,
The dock doesn't have room for an internal drive. An e-sata card would work, but it would only be worth it if the 34 mBps limit was not there.

Rajeev

[RonS]

RonS, do you know whether drives mounted in the UltrabaySlim port on the ThinkPad itself suffer the same 34MBps limit?
-darren

No, they don't. A PATA drive mounted in the Thinkpad's slim bay gets about 40MB/sec, and the same drive in the Advanced Dock's slim bay gets about 34 MB/sec.

I can get about 64MB/sec sustained (all block sizes) using a PCMCIA Firewire 800 drive, so I know the mobo can handle more.

[darrenf]

Peculiar. Could the speed difference be related to the fact that the dock uses UltraBay Enhanced rather than UltraBay Slim?

rbsrao79, I think the only way to find out whether the bottleneck will affect PCIe adapters is to install a card and test it. It sounds like you have the dock and the interest, so I would encourage you to give it a go and report back to us with your findings.

Good luck!

-darren

[rbsrao79]

I don't have a dock yet. I was doing this research to see if this or the minidoc would be better.

Does the thinkpad have a way of scheduling tasks that would happen when the laptop is docked. For example, can i have it backup only when docked ?

Rajeev

[WirelessAndy]

No, they don't. A PATA drive mounted in the Thinkpad's slim bay gets about 40MB/sec...

Is that the "Ultrabay", and is 40 MB/sec average, or peak?

[at339]

FWIW, here is product information and light test results using a SIIG eSATA card and Seagate eSATA drives.

SIIG eSATA II Express Card, ~$80.00
part number: SC-SAE512-S1
http://siig.com/product.asp?catid=129&pid=1036

Note that SIIG's eSATA connector sockets are arranged horizontally side-by-side which minimizes the height of the connector extension. Some other mfg's cards stack the eSATA sockets vertically making the card taller, possibly causing an obstacle or annoyance to the laptop user's left hand wrist.

Seagate eSATA II 500 GB (16 MB) 7200 RPM External Hard Drive, ~$400.00.
http://seagate.com/products/retail/esata/

Seagate USB 2.0 500 GB (16 MB) 7200 RPM External Hard Drive, ~$325.00
part number: ST3500641CB-RK
http://seagate.com/products/retail/external/usbfirewire

Test: Windows XP file copy (20 files totalling 161 GB, uncompressed):

Seagate USB 2.0 500 GB Hard Drive to Seagate eSATA 500 GB = 24.33 MB/sec (Windows XP file copy, uncompressed)

Seagate eSATA 500 GB to Seagate eSATA 500 GB via SIIG eSATA II Express Card (both drives connected to SIIG card) = 52.93 MB/sec (Windows XP file copy, uncompressed)

It's refreshing to see eSATA providing significant performance improvement - more than double the speed of USB! Personally, I'm replacing all my USB drives with eSATA drives.

[rbsrao79]

Well, I tested the idea out.

Controller : SIIG eSATA II PCIe i/e (SC-SAE212-S2) - Silicon Image 3132 SataLink Controller
Drive - Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250gb

HD Tune: Maxtor 6B250S0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 20.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 62.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 50.3 MB/sec
Access Time : 14.9 ms
Burst Rate : 98.1 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 2.7%

My internal drive by comparison (not sure why cpu went to 33%).
Drive - Hitachi 7200 rpm 60gb
HD Tune: HTS721060G9SA00 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 22.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 45.0 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 36.1 MB/sec
Access Time : 15.1 ms
Burst Rate : 85.5 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 33.3%


HDTach gave similar results except for burst speed.

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250gb:
Burst Speed : 122.1 MB/s
Average Read : 54.5 MB/s
Random Access:16.4 ms

Drive - Hitachi 7200 rpm 60gb
Burst Speed : 112.4 MB/s
Average Read : 37.9 mb/s
Random Access: 15.1 mb/s


It appears the expansion dock allows speeds higher then 37 MB/s. However, there were a couple of surprises.

1. Everytime the laptop boots up when in the dock, there are two LOUD beeps with message "Expansion Rom Not initialized : PCI Storage Controller on Slot 03 ...<can't remember but will paste next time I boot>". The card works though

2. While the card works, there is no hot unplug supported. However this may be due to the card itself. I can however undock safely.

3. I can't seem to reflash the cards' bios. THe option to do that is greyed out (in Device Manager)

4. While I can backup to the drive using thinkvantage backup. I cannot restore in Thinkvantage mini-os as the card is not detected by the bios. This makes it pointless as a backup solution. VMWare works well though.

I guess I could call up lenovo with regards to the bootup initialization error and see if they have a solution


Rajeev

[Winchester]

I attempted to get the SiG PCIe firewire card to work with no luck. The PC would lock on the POST cycle, usually with some weirdly coloured screen.

Are there different versions of the advanced dock? Do you have a version number on the model serial number sticker?

[rnsolo]

hi.

has anyone with an e-sata pcmcia or express card tried booting windows xp from an external e-sata drive.

thanks in advance.

[werl]

=>
I just installed my Addonics Model ADEXC34-2E eSATA ExpressCard32 and connected it to an eSATA enclosure housing a Seagate 200GB drive, 7200RPM, 8M cache. Using Roadkill's Disk Speed version 1.1, I measured the following rates:

Linear Read: 60.8969 MB/s
Random Read: 3.4162 MB/s
Access Time: 7.65ms
Overall Score: 8095

This is in line with the score I see for an internally-connected SATA drive in a desktop PC. ....
-darren[/quote] =>

Card seems reasonable on that !
Could I ask, how has yr addonics card performed since then,
as well as above, & any glitches?
- I'm seeking a decent express 34 eSATA card for a T61,
can find no reliable guide.