is e-SATA faster than USB2?

Virdi · 2 Jan 2007 at 17:42

Hi all,

Please could someone explain the basics of e-SATA...

If I wanted to hook up an External hard-disk to me PC - What would be the better/faster way of doing it? USB or e-SATA?

Thanks

Justintime · 2 Jan 2007 at 17:44

eSATA is supposedly considerably faster, never tried it though tbh.

rpstewart · 3 Jan 2007 at 10:54

eSATA is just normal SATA but run externally so there is no difference in speed between an eSATA drive and the identical disk mounted internally so expect anything up to 85Mb/s sustained transfer (if the drive is that quick) as opposed to the 20Mb/s or so that USB2 will give you.

The connector is slightly different to stop it falling out so standard SATA cables are no use but any eSATA device will come with a cable.

HEADRAT · 3 Jan 2007 at 14:19

I would imagine the CPU overhead of e-SATA would also be much lower that USB2.

HEADRAT

brakeinup · 4 Jan 2007 at 10:30

I am looking at an eSATA setup using a Thecus box with 2 drives mirrored.

This also comes with its own card and cable. Its weird that its a 150mbps card when the Thecus is capable of 300mbps.