Has anyone had any luck with using an ExpressCard connected to an
eSATA external hard drive (7200rpm)?

I'm planning to use this on a Dell Inspiron 9400, instead of running
USB 2.0. I believe that the eSATA/ExpressCard should give me a data
transfer rate of greater than 2Gb/s compared to the USB 2.0 max of
480mbps. Is that correct?

I'm thinking of a Seagate 320Gb hard drive in a Vantec Nexstar 3
enclosure. The disk will be used for backups and for video editing.

Thanks

"freeflytim" <tbushell********.com> wrote in message
news:1175650151.697205.160730@p77g2000hsh.googlegr oups.com...
> Has anyone had any luck with using an ExpressCard connected to an
> eSATA external hard drive (7200rpm)?
>
> I'm planning to use this on a Dell Inspiron 9400, instead of running
> USB 2.0. I believe that the eSATA/ExpressCard should give me a data
> transfer rate of greater than 2Gb/s compared to the USB 2.0 max of
> 480mbps. Is that correct?
>
> I'm thinking of a Seagate 320Gb hard drive in a Vantec Nexstar 3
> enclosure. The disk will be used for backups and for video editing.
>

The current highest transfer rate of a SATA2 hard disk drive is 300 Mb/s.
Exactly what advantage do you think a 2 Gb/s connection will give you? If
you have a firewire port, use that instead. Due to differences in the way
USB and Firewire work, Firewire 400 will operate faster than USB 480.

> The current highest transfer rate of a SATA2 hard disk drive is 300 Mb/s.

Well, that's wrong for a start...look it up

> Exactly what advantage do you think a 2 Gb/s connection will give you?

"Exactly" about 5 times faster than USB! Exactly.

"freeflytim" <tbushell********.com> wrote in message
news:1175685889.495998.282710@q75g2000hsh.googlegr oups.com...
>> The current highest transfer rate of a SATA2 hard disk drive is 300 Mb/s.
>
> Well, that's wrong for a start...look it up
>
>> Exactly what advantage do you think a 2 Gb/s connection will give you?
>
> "Exactly" about 5 times faster than USB! Exactly.
>

SATA is also known as SATA150, the 150 representing 150 Mbytes/s. SATA2 is
also known as SATA300, the 300 representing 300 Mbytes/s. Both were an
improvement on the ATA133, the 133 representing 133 Mbytes/s, know often
incorrectly referred to as PATA.

Or are you confusing bits and bytes? A 300 Megabyte per second device is
also roughly a 3 Gigabit per second device. Your 2 GBit/s card is really
around a 200 Megabyte per second card but will actually be slower than that
due to housekeeping protocols etc., thus not showing any significant
advantage. As it happens, the disk drives are also slower than their
advertised speeds for the same reason. As it happens the SATA150 hard disk
was a disappointment to many as is not noticeably faster than a ATA133,
because the extra protocols slow it down. This was addressed with the
SATA300, and several other changes make it more than twice as fast as
SATA150.

You know, I think you're right - I'm confusing bytes and bits per
second. But I can't use the (solitary) firewire connection on the
notebook because I'll be plugging the camcorder into that, which
leaves either USB or the ExpressCard bay.
So then an eSATA connection into the ExpressCard should be faster than
USB - Ja?

"freeflytim" <tbushell********.com> wrote in message
news:1175731411.969281.192320@l77g2000hsb.googlegr oups.com...
> You know, I think you're right - I'm confusing bytes and bits per
> second. But I can't use the (solitary) firewire connection on the
> notebook because I'll be plugging the camcorder into that, which
> leaves either USB or the ExpressCard bay.
> So then an eSATA connection into the ExpressCard should be faster than
> USB - Ja?
>

Yes, but does it matter? What are you using it for that has to be so fast?

Video editing. Camcorder on firewire, avi files created on external
drive. I wasn't sure whether USB would be fast enough.

"freeflytim" <tbushell********.com> writes:
>Video editing. Camcorder on firewire, avi files created on external
>drive. I wasn't sure whether USB would be fast enough.

It sounds like you are editing data from a miniDV camera. The miniDV
data stream is 25 Mbits/sec, or around 6 Mbytes/sec. USB2 is 480
Mbits/sec, and even with protocol overheads is many times faster than
needed for this relatively slow data source. There's also plenty of
bandwidth in one Firewire port to talk to both the camera and a Firewire
disk, if you can figure out how to hook them to a single port.

Dave

"freeflytim" <tbushell********.com> wrote in message
news:1175731411.969281.192320@l77g2000hsb.googlegr oups.com...
> You know, I think you're right - I'm confusing bytes and bits per
> second. But I can't use the (solitary) firewire connection on the
> notebook because I'll be plugging the camcorder into that, which
> leaves either USB or the ExpressCard bay.
> So then an eSATA connection into the ExpressCard should be faster than
> USB - Ja?
>

Firewire Hubs are readily available. Also most (but not all) Firewire drive
boxes have a daisychain port (as Firewire supports this). However some
users have reported problems daisychaining a Camcorder of a Firewire box
(because the bit rate of the camcorder is only 100 Mbit/s).

"Dave Martindale" <davem@cs.ubc.ca> wrote in message
news:ev1mbn$9n8$1@swain.cs.ubc.ca...
> "freeflytim" <tbushell********.com> writes:
>>Video editing. Camcorder on firewire, avi files created on external
>>drive. I wasn't sure whether USB would be fast enough.
>
> It sounds like you are editing data from a miniDV camera. The miniDV
> data stream is 25 Mbits/sec, or around 6 Mbytes/sec. USB2 is 480
> Mbits/sec, and even with protocol overheads is many times faster than
> needed for this relatively slow data source. There's also plenty of
> bandwidth in one Firewire port to talk to both the camera and a Firewire
> disk, if you can figure out how to hook them to a single port.
>

USB 480 should be fast enough, but don't operate the drive through a hub
with other USB devices.

Although the Firewire port should be able to handle a disk drive and a
camcorder in theory, there have been reported problems because the disk
drive box will communicate at 400 Mb/s, but the camcorder only uses the
Firewire at 100 Mb/s. The slower speed holds up the faster communication,
and effects vary from dropouts to complete failure (depending on the
revision of the host port chips). This seems to be the case regardless of
whether a hub or daisychaining is used.