eSATA that works solid

HHM

HHM

HHM

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Joined
5 Aug 2007
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178
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Denmark
Hi again :-)

For additional back-up and transfer-purpuse for HD-Video I want to use
eSATA, but it seems people are having much trouble getting their MB´s
onboard controllers to do true hot-swap, solid, and with no problems,..

If I whant a solid solution that 100 pct works, everytime, and with the
intended transfer-rate, what do I do ? is there a eSATA card that is
known to work well ?

Thanks for any help
 
the problem is, in order to make everything hot-swap and nice, drive performance is reduced considerably, as well as reliability. a USB HDD enclosure would suite your needs much better.

also, bare drives are hardly suited for making reliable backups. a little drop, a nudge while they're spinning and you'll get data corruption and bad sectors. zap the controller-board with static and you'll endup with a drive that doesn't function at all!
 
Hmm ,.. just what I did fear ,.. As for USB the I have much mixed feelings and
bad experience with reliability and hot swap also, but worst of all they are far
to slow,. firewire has worked much better here and might be what I end using

Just I hoped for eSATA since that was supposed to be new and better, some
reviews seems to say so,.. but then again others seems to claim performance
on par to firewire 400 ,... I had hoped for a proven eSATA solution

Forums all over seems to be full of people with eSATA-hot-swap problems etc.

Maybe I will just have accept all this and deal with booting everytime

After years and years with data-loss on optical media I will only use HD from
now on, I will deal with the issuses you mentioned about drops etc, and find a
solution somehow, likely just a sata-tray for the back-up HDs , booting will be
much quicker than using USB I guess,.. (transfers on 5-50 GB typically)

For a temporary solution I use a 1TB Seagate FreeAgent pro, its OK as long
as used with firewire, but it is already half-full ,.. and I need more than one
back-up, loosing 16 GB HD-Video from Paris this summer made me reconsider
the hole back-up procedure, from capturing to end-storage

Suggestions still welcome
 
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i can share my experiences here with you on this subject. i have built and used 5 e-sata caddys, 4 of them were akasa integral esata and usb caddys with 750gb samsung hard drives in them. they work perfectly fine on the p35 chipset boards they are connected to all the time. i also have an akasa integral 2.5 inch caddy with a westerndigital 320gb drive in it, i use it 1 a month for server backup its awsome and twice the speed of the usb connection it also has on it.
e-sata all the way these days.

just a note the 3.5 inch caddy is slow to be recognised with my p35 chipset mobo with the samsung drive in it, it take about a minute from plugging in before the drive is able to be detected but then it works perfectly fine. the caddy with an wd 500gb 3.5 inch drive in it is much faster on detection.

i currently have the 320gb 2.5inch caddy here if u want i could possibly do a hdtune speed run for you if you like.
 
Cyber-Mav said:
i currently have the 320gb 2.5inch caddy here if u want i could possibly do a hdtune speed run for you if you like.
Click to expand...

Hi Cyber-Mav ,.. thanks for your input ,.. I did some google on the Akasa-
stuff, and yes, they are certainly in the good end with the highest eSATA
speeds being reported to around 50-55 MB/S ,.. that is above the typical
firewire 400, and far over real-world USB-speeds, as for the the hot-swap
reliability I didn´t find much about that

Thanks also for the hint about P35, I will use one P35, and two P45 PCs
and good to know that Akasa seem to work with ICHR controllers, (though
a seccondary MB-controller MIGHT have been what you used)

Its my general impression that the ICHR controllers are better at picking
up hot-swap than typical aditional controllers (f.eks in PQ5 line)

People experience diffrent behaviour on diffrent controllers

Still I would like to use "raw disks", and I wonder if this is true hot-swap:

HD-001-SH_400.jpg


SEE DATA HERE

But still I have to keep in mind that a simple SATA-tray and using boot
might give me the full speed of a modern disk like 80-110 MB/S
 
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Here is at least one person having succes with hot-swap, even though he is
not informative about what controller being used, and what the speeds are

look here
 
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I have the above Sharkoon Quickport Pro attached via eSATA although, as my motherboard has no eSATA header, it's connected to one of the standard SATA connectors on the ICHR controller.

Works well but hotswap is useless. Even turning the thing off leaves the drive hanging around in Explorer/My Computer for ages sometimes.
 
Have you all made sure that AHCI is enabled in BIOS for the SATA ports? If not, the sata controller will not enable the hot swapping features etc. I have an eSATA drive (Akasa Integral) and have connected it to: SiI3132 (excellent), JMicron (onboard), and P45 (ICH10R) and all work great, with the Silicon Image probably being the best. No hangs etc. I can simply turn off etc. fine.
 
Yes I've got AHCI enabled, Vista still doesn't handle the drives properly - I turn the Quickport off and the drive stays there in Windows. Even putting a different drive in and powering it back up often leaves the old drive present rather than the new one.
 
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So when you turn the Quickport off, the drive disappears from My Computer immediately?

Are you using Vista's own drivers or the Intel ones?
 
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i should have mentioned this in my first post, i dont use the ich9r controller on my p35 mobo since its not running in ahci mode, i use the 2 jmicron ports on my board connected to a esata pci bracket to give me the e-sata connections and those 2 ports i have set to run in ahci mode so i get hotswapping and it works perfectly fine.
 
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