In recent years, the eSATA interface has already ceased to be something exotic, turning into a completely normal means of connecting external hard drives to a computer. Many are already using it, and there are no special alternatives - USB 3.0 is still looming on the horizon, and everyone else external interfaces too slow. Even the former king of speed - FireWire 800, in practice, provides only about 80 MB / s, while even single desktop hard drives have crossed the border of 100 MB / s, and there are also external arrays of several disks. At the same time, the practical application of the FW800 under the control of the most common today operating systems families Microsoft Windows is associated with a number of difficulties. Yes, and the support of this interface to the computer, as a rule, has to be “screwed” on its own, and it is not so cheap. Massive external interfaces (such as the ubiquitous USB 2.0 and the slightly rarer but also common FW400) in practice. provide only 30-40 MB / s, which is not enough even for portable hard drives, not to mention their larger counterparts. And eSATA has no such problems - in terms of speed it exactly matches the internal SATA, for which the hard drives are designed. Moreover, eSATA support is very cheap - sometimes you can just bring one of the chipset ports out, and putting a cheap controller in general is not a tricky thing.

VZhD manufacturers take this into account, so now almost all of them (it doesn't matter if we are talking about a large or small company) have stationary models that support eSATA. And for portable, all vendors prefer to continue to use the "regular" USB most often - models with eSATA can still be counted on the fingers. The reason for this is simple, and it is the lack of power on the eSATA. Stationary drives still need their own PSU, so replacing one interface cable with another does not bring any inconvenience, but performance increases significantly. And it's worse with a portable HDD - they are quite satisfied with the amount of electricity that one USB port provides, so when using this interface, you can get by with just one cable. But if we want to increase the speed of work, then we will have to use one cable for data exchange, and another one for power supply (from the same USB, for example). Of course, this is inconvenient, and the increase in speed is still not as radical as in the case of stationary high-speed railways. And the new interface is extremely slow to pave the way to this market segment, because when choosing between “faster” and “more convenient”, 90% of computer users will still choose the latter.

But in equipment manufacturing companies, designers do not get paid for beautiful eyes. And once one of them, after a long meditation on USB ports and eSATA, a sensible idea came to mind - why not combine them? This solution does not have any particular drawbacks, but there are a lot of advantages: firstly, drives that need 2.5 W can be connected with just one cable, but at the same time get a higher speed than when using only USB. Secondly, this approach saves space. Simply because no one prevents us from using this combo port both as a regular eSATA and as a regular USB - it turns out three in one. AT desktop computers this is not very relevant, but for a laptop (especially a compact one) placement a large number ports - the task is not always trivial. It also turns out to add support for eSATA (moreover, "better" than with a simple soldering of the eSATA connector) and do not reduce the number of USB ports. And it looks something like this:

We took the picture from the MSI website, so we mention it. In fact, although "Power eSATA" is not already an accepted interindustry standard, it is unlikely that standardization is just around the corner - a very simple solution, especially since it is already being used not by one manufacturer, but by several. True, somewhat less active than we would like. In particular, MSI uses ports of this type so far in only one motherboard model (MSI 790FX-GD70 for AM3) and eight laptop models. Other manufacturers have laptops with Power eSATA, and ASRock is the most active user of this technology among motherboard manufacturers - all three models on the X58 chipset, and one on the P45 are equipped with such a port.

But, of course, this is not enough. And equipment designed for the Power eSATA port has already begun to appear, so we also needed something like that in the laboratory. Moreover, the idea of ​​changing the motherboard on the test bench somehow did not appeal. An attempt to find a controller with a PCIe (or, at worst, PCI) interface with Power eSATA was unsuccessful - there are many of them with a "simple" eSATA, but this does not make it any easier. It turned out that Kanguru sells its flash drive designed for this interface complete with a special adapter cable that turns a pair of eSATA and USB ports into an eSATA port. But the products of this manufacturer are not supplied to our market, and it was not possible to find such a cable separately. But we were lucky to find a much-needed ExpressCard adapter on sale. And since support for this laptop interface was already “screwed” to our test bench earlier (when it was necessary to test flash drives in this format), so this turned out to be a solution to the problem.

After paying for the purchase on eBay, we soon waited for the parcel, which turned out to be a small unmarked cardboard box. The desired adapter was removed from it, also almost without identification marks (in any case, everything found on the Internet for the somewhat indecent-looking combination “A&S” clearly did not belong to the topic), a paper instruction in the form of a single folded sheet, a CD with drivers (a huge a bunch for all controllers generally produced by this plant) and a very interesting cable that allows you to connect any mobile SATA hard drive to the Power eSATA port without using any additional boxes and other things. We were only a little less pleased with the latter than with the adapter itself - firstly, a clear demonstration of the usefulness of such a solution, and secondly, good way to test in practice its abilities in terms of performance.

But first, let's finish with the study of the device. As everyone knows (Tatarsky wrote twenty minutes after it became known to him), the ExpressCard interface contains two groups of pins - PCIe 1x and USB. The second in this adapter is simply output to the corresponding pins of the Power eSATA connector, and the first is needed just to implement this eSATA. For this, the Silicon Image SiI3531 controller is used, specifications which just meet all the necessary conditions. The logic of the adapter is understandable and meets the aspirations of users who dream of adding an eSATA port to the laptop, and not just a simple one, but with power. What about speed? This is what we will check.

To check, let's take the recently tested 32 GB Kingston SSDNow SNE125-S2 / 32GB SSD drive, which, let me remind you, when connected to the ICH10R SATA port, gave us up to 250 MB / s when reading data and 200 MB / s when writing. And it was connected to the Power eSATA vs adapter in two ways. First, by using the supplied eSATA-SATA cable, which allows us to use the full power of the high-speed interface. Secondly, with the almost identical looking USB-to-SATA adapter from the Apacer SAFD 253 kit. Outwardly - complete equality: only one cable, so the degree of convenience is the same. And for performance testing, we used two IOMeter subtests that measure the speed of sequential reading and writing data in blocks of different sizes - we think these two “slides” will be enough for everyone to qualitatively evaluate.

So, with deep regret we are forced to state the fact that the use of SiI3531 "cuts" the speed quite noticeably. Theoretically, although the bandwidth of PCIe 1x is insufficient for the full implementation of the declared SATA300 mode, it is no more than 250 MB / s, that is, it could be sufficient for our test storage medium. But in practice, this compact microcircuit "does not reach" the theoretical capabilities of the bus far - both when reading and when writing data, everything rested on exactly 118 MB / s. In fairness, we should note that our grief is rather theoretical in nature - there were simply hopes that at least 200 MB / s could be obtained from this controller. But in practice, even 118 MB / s is, if not ideal, but very good - a rare hard drive, even on external tracks, is capable of more. This is if we talk about stationary, but do not forget that the most interesting modification is eSATA with power for portable hard drives, where everything is much more modest. However, at the same time, in terms of ease of connection with such use, it is quite comparable to USB, and comparing these two methods in terms of connection speed - you see for yourself, is not serious. No matter how unsuccessful a specific controller that fell into your hands is, you can still be sure that all the "failure" can only be compared with a chipset SATA controller, but not with other interfaces.

Thus, we have solved our problem - flash drives with the Power eSATA interface, which are gradually appearing on sale, have something to test on, and the development of this modification of the interface by VZhD manufacturers will also not take us by surprise now. However, it is obvious that adapters of the type studied today will be of interest not only for testing equipment, but also for practical use. Indeed, at the moment, to put it mildly, not every laptop is equipped with even a “simple” eSATA connector, and many users want to operate the VZhD without speed limits. For stationary models, however, you don’t need to chase Power eSATA, but if you buy additional equipment, then it makes sense to make sure that its functionality is maximum (especially when you don’t have to pay extra money for it). Obviously, the tested device copes with this task somewhat better than the more familiar eSATA adapters in the same ExpressCard format. But, unfortunately, there is nothing to please desktop users yet - they either need to select the appropriate motherboard model in advance, or wait for suitable expansion cards with a PCIe interface to appear on the wide market.

Despite evolution optical technologies and the emergence of standards such as HD DVD and Blu-Ray, it is hard drives that allow those who work with digital media data to store and transfer enormous amounts. The optics are simply not enough to store even ordinary video in the processing stage, not to mention high definition video (High Definition - HD). It's no secret that during processing, to output just one minute of the finished video, you have to store an entire hour of source material, which is then assembled, recomposed and re-folded. Therefore, it is not surprising that many professionals use external drives.

Typically, external hard drives are slower than their internal counterparts. In order not to lose mobility, external drives usually use the USB or FireWire interface, which imposes a limit on the transfer rate: peak throughput ranges from 400 to 480 Mbps. How small this is compared to the new SATA standard, which provides up to 300 Gb / s! And every next year, with the increase in the number of megapixels of cameras and the popularization of HD video, the old interfaces will seem more and more "wretched", because it will take a long time to copy 30 GB of video to a disk with a USB interface. Noticeably longer than the second hard SATA drive if it is installed on your computer.

In addition to high performance, an important advantage of the SATA interface is "hot swap". Today we will introduce you to one of the pioneers among the external hard drives SATA (eSATA): Seagate eSATA 500 GB. It should be noted that although we tested the 500 GB version, Seagate also produces a 300 GB eSATA drive model, which costs accordingly less.

The appearance of the Seagate eSATA drive.

Like all Seagate hard drives, the drive that came to us for testing has a model number. In this case, it is ST3500601XS-RK, which is impossible to remember, and unnecessary. It's easier to call the device Seagate eSATA, and everyone will understand you - even the Price.ru database. Inside the Seagate eSATA is a 7200 RPM Seagate Barracuda ST3500641 hard drive, which is to line 7200.9 with a capacity of 500 GB and 16 MB cache. This is not the last model from Seagate - a 750 GB drive from the 7200.10 family has already been in the THG laboratory, which we are now raffling off among our readers. For the computer to see HDD Seagate eSATA 500Gb, you need to connect the eSATA data cable and power cable to the device.

The eSATA cable is black and the red one is a regular SATA cable. Do not confuse.

The design of eSATA is broadly similar to that of other Seagate hard drives, but there are differences. The stylish silver case with black inserts is made a little differently than the Seagate 400Gb Pushbutton Backup models - both the front panel and the back are different. The changes on the front panel are more cosmetic, but the front button now turns on the drive, rather than launching the utility Reserve copy. After power is supplied to the Seagate eSATA 500Gb, the blue LED lights up. Numerous USB and Firewire connectors have disappeared from the back, and the socket into which the plug from the power supply is inserted has also changed.

Another nice feature of Seagate external hard drives has also disappeared - the possibility of modular connection. Previous Seagate PushButton Backups could be stacked on top of each other and connected with a FireWire cable "through the other". However, this could not be done with the USB interface. Now we have an eSATA interface, and "one to another" drives are no longer connected. But, now drives can be connected in RAID. And you can put them on top of each other as before, while the design of the cover is optimized so that the "stack" of hard drives does not fall apart.

Only one eSATA connector on the back

The drive comes with a Promise eSATA300 TX2 controller with two external ports. A very logical step, since the eSATA ports on motherboards although they do occur, they are not as common as USB and FireWire. Note that connecting Seagate eSATA to a laptop is a completely different topic. The laptop controller is not supplied with the device.

The package includes a Promise eSATA300 TX2 PCI controller.

In addition to the drive and eSATA card, the bundle includes the BounceBack Express V 7.0 software package. It is very easy to use and allows you to back up entire drives and folders. In addition, Bounceback gives you the ability to schedule backups. It is true to compare BounceBack with type reservations Acronis True Image Or Norton Ghost, we would not - too different weight categories.

User manual and cables included.

As we have noted, the key difference between the new Seagate eSATA drive and older hard drives is that the drive has lost its FireWire and USB ports. In our opinion, these ports should be left. Of course, the strength of the drive is its excellent performance. But external hard drives have another advantage: portability. If you want to transfer data using the Seagate drive to another PC, then it must have an eSATA port. Most likely, you will encounter the absence of one. It is important to understand that eSATA and SATA connectors are different from each other. You will not be able to connect ordinary SATA drives to the eSATA controller, and vice versa, connect Seagate eSATA through a regular SATA connector on the motherboard.

You will not be able to plug an eSATA drive into a SATA connector.

SATA and eSATA connectors on controllers.

SATA and eSATA connectors.

And yet, eSATA is gradually appearing even in low-cost motherboards. So recently a desktop computer visited the THG lab

1 year ago