Worth it over USB2.0? Thinking of a place to backup my photos and video, but I suppose it might be useful for working from as well hence eSata.

ye it is noticeably faster if you are transferring frequently and/or big files

wouldn’t bother if you are transferring infrequently

Definitely 100% USB is absolutely crap for fast data transfer.

Recent experience with a USB drive showed that DT was much faster onto my Mac, than onto my PC. NFTS formatted drive. Firewire 400 and 800 are both a lot faster IME. SATA is super-quick.

USB is good for mouses and stuff, crap for proper stable data transfer.

Availability of drives is lower, it seems. Just browsed through 100 or so drives in the local shop and foudn no eSata ones. Do they always need an external power supply?

I think eSATA’s will need external power, but that’s no big deal, surely?

USB drives abound cos most PCs are rubbish and have no better option such as FW or eSATA ports.

Some 2.5″ eSata drives can take power from usb but are connected for data via eSata.

I have an LG one that does just this.

its not the drive that is the eSATA component.. its the enclosure/box that is providing that…

this enclosure takes a normal 3.5″ SATA drive and has a small board in it and gives you the esata connectivity

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149273

the enclosure will need an external power supply and will come with one

USB drives abound cos most PCs are rubbish and have no better option such as FW or eSATA ports.

FW has never been cheap interface and adding an eSATA on a mobo will add a few quid to the price of the board

FW has never been cheap interface and adding an eSATA on a mobo will add a few quid to the price of the board

So?

‘This bicycle is cheap, but has wooden rims. This one is more spensive but has pneumatic tyres.’

Cheaper not always gooder.

Never said it was better..

merely stating the reason why you don’t see FW as much as USB 2.0

Oh ok. 😳

Wasn’t the reluctance among PC component manufacturers to use FW due to it being a ‘Mac’ thing? Seemed to be common in video cameras, but din’t catch on with other devices, and although being vastly superior to USB (speshly FW800), still not as common on external drives. Bearing in mind when FW appeared, the only other PnP connection was USB 1.

However, the expensive hardware needed to implement it (US$1–$2) has prevented FireWire from displacing USB in low-end mass-market computer peripherals, where product cost is a major constraint.[4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1394_interface

I have FW, USB2.0 and eSata on this laptop 🙂

However it seems that eSata is unpowered and eSatap is powered. The connectors are different and it seems I have the latter powered version. However, most drives don’t have this connector.. but adapters are available to provide a power plug.

Not sure if it’s worth it since it’s mainly for backup, but like I say it’d be nice to have faster, gives me more options. Means I can work nicely off it rather than having to copy back.

Cheaper not always gooder.

eSATA is, as the name would suggest, external SATA. It’s exactly the same as internal SATA, only with an externally facing connection, so performance should be the same and a regular drive. eSATA batters USB2 and FW for throughput; the newest FW is 800Mbps(*), the oldest SATA is 1.5Gbps, and current SATA incarnations are four times that.

USB3 is theoretically faster. On paper it can run at 5Gbps, however it’s an immature technology with a lardy protocol and you’ll be lucky if you get transfer speeds comparable to in real world terms. Oh, and unlike eSATA, it’s not likely to get any faster.

All that said though, once the interface is “fast enough” then the attached drive is your limiting factor. If the drive can supply data at, say, 1Gbps, then it won’t get any faster regardless of whether the interface is running at 1.5 or 60.

(* – these are all x bits per second, not bytes)

Well I’ve got about 150Gb of video and photos to back up for starters… 🙂

Perhaps consider a NAS with a gigabit network interface and either RAID or a DVD burner built in…

so you data is either mirrored on the NAS
or the data is on the NAS and on a load of DVDs

Wasn’t the reluctance among PC component manufacturers to use FW due to it being a ‘Mac’ thing?

Firewire was always good at sustained data transfer, hence its popularity on things like video cameras. I’m speculating of course, but I don’t think the lack of PC uptake is due to it being a “Mac thing” so much as it quickly turned into a fairly niche connector; if I was buying a computer solely for video editing, I’d get a Mac.

USB, on the other hand, was never really intended to be a high performance connector; it was supposed to be a cheap and cheerful way of binning all the old legacy serial and PS/2 guff, and in that it was massively successful.

So annoying that USB took off. Slow, annoying incompatibilities between chipsets and a far too large variety of stupid plug shapes.

What I tend to do for eSata is get something like this:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173389
And stick my own drive in there. £17 seems a bit rich though, I got mine from there for £6 a few months ago. Worth shopping around.

For large amounts of data, then eSATA is the dogs, as Cougar sez. I had to use this USB drive to transfer hundreds of gigs, and it took bloody ages. How I longed for FW or eSATA… 🙁

It comes down to adding the interfaces/ports to motherboards…

your cheapest motherboards aren’t going to have all the connectivity options

things like eSATA and FW your going to pay extra for… FW requires a royalty payment to be paid for its implementation on a motherboard

I was buying a computer solely for video editing, I’d get a Mac

even baring in mind you can get more hardware on a self build for the same price?

Yeah.. considering NAS/RAID1 actually.. but I’ve got NAS at home. I could probably wait tbh. And should.

Back to the OP,

I’d suggest that ‘more storage’ and ‘backup’ are two separate applications with different requirements.

If you want more storage, it’d be cleaner to fit an additional internal disk. If you want backup, then in a home environment raw performance is less important. If it takes two hours to do your initial backup, does it matter? Are you in a hurry? After that, you should only be backing up changes which will be far less data.

Also, what are you protecting against? An external disk will save your data in the event of a disk failure, but won’t help in the slightest if it’s plugged into the PC when there’s a disaster such as a fire or a burglary. If you’re never removing the disk then it doesn’t need to be removable.

I’ve been thinking for a while now of getting an old disk, copying all my photos etc to it, then giving it to my mum for safekeeping.

It’s a laptop (hence the desire not to have an external PSU) and it already has two internal disks.

I suppose I want lots of things.

I want backup, I would also like off-site backup too for obvious reasons, but that’s quite hard to organise if it’s 00s of Gb. Although, my movies won’t take up all that much space once they’ve been edited down, they could all go on a DVD. Then again I could album-ise my pictures and save them as JPEGS but that’s a lot of work again of course. And it’s hard to delete the dross but I’m just not sure why.

The thing about performance is for two reasons – 1) I have an eSata port so it would be a shame not to use it (yes I’m a geek) and 2) If I wanted to go back and work on the stuff I could do it nice and quickly without having to copy over.

Important docs and files are backed up on Live Mesh. Presuming this is good enough….

molgrips – Member

It’s a laptop (hence the desire not to have an external PSU) and it already has two internal disks.

Well then:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/192247
+
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173389

Does USB and eSata for compatibility, no wall plug needed, and 1tb storage.

The only minor annoyance is that it is powered by USB even when connected by eSATA, so in that mode it needs two cables connected to the PC.

Oh and check the height of the drive is okay for the caddy. 🙂

thunderbolt is faster than all other connectors for large data transfer.
external hd’s are going to be available this summer, mac only at the moment though but high end pc’s will get it too.

Retro83 – saw that option but it looks more expensive…. Should shop about a bit more tho.

things like eSATA and FW your going to pay extra for…

If it costs more than a fraction of a penny to mass-produce eSATA on a board that is already SATA-equipped, I’d be surprised.

even baring in mind you can get more hardware on a self build for the same price?

Well, if I were actually buying a computer solely for video editing, I’d spend a couple of months speccing out exactly what I wanted rather than making something up off the top of my head. It was an example.

I suppose I want lots of things.

Given that you’ve no internal bays left and an eSATA port built in, it does sound like an eSATA disk is going to tick most of the boxes then. You can pick up caddies for sub-£20 that have both eSATA and USB connections, so you’ve got the flexibility to plug it into anything.

That’s kind of what I was thinking Cougar. Even if I only use it whilst I’m away and then copy it all over to the home NAS when I get home.. perhaps continue to use it as work space for editing or something I dunno. I could bring it with me on holiday say and then back up as I go, so I don’t have to wait until I get home to back up everything.

My interest was sparked by seeing 1.5Tb USB hard drives advertised for £50, and a message popping up on PSE asking me if I wanted to back up my catalog…

If it costs more than a fraction of a penny to mass-produce eSATA on a board that is already SATA-equipped, I’d be surprised.

Yeah it might not cost much to add it… but the manufacturer never gives you stuff at trade price..

So one motherboard with eSATA one without… which is going to cost more… its a no brainer.. Some people might think.. I’ll save myself a few quid and not buy the one with the eSATA as I probably won’t use it

A big manufacturer of PCs might think… we add eSATA to this one and charge a bit more…

Its like anything else.. More features costs more in this mortal life 😯

Anyway not trying to start an argument.. might of though 😆

not all sata is created equal. there is sata-II and now sata-III which is 6gb/s
(which is why i upgraded to a new macbookpro with thunderbolt and sata-III)

Can I have your old MacBook then please? 🙂

thunderbolt is faster than all other connectors for large data transfer.

Stepping away from trivial points like “cost” and “availability” for a moment, what possible consumer-grade disk subsystem is going to require a faster interface than SATA 3G? ONFI3.0 (which is only an on-paper standard for SSD so far) is about the only thing I can think of that comes close.

(which is why i upgraded to a new macbookpro with thunderbolt and sata-III)

Really? You bought a new laptop to get SATA 6G and Thunderbolt? What are you plugging into them?

Is speed really important for back ups?
I only copy the new stuff, which is only a few MB’s everyday, and anyway, I just start it and go to bed.

will use an ssd scratch disk for photoshop and a back-up for final cut

Is speed really important for back ups?

yes if you need to back up 40-50gb before leaving a shoot location (you do this because you have had hard drives in laptops fail) will also get a thunderbolt cardreader too if/when they become available.

currently firewire800 takes about 1gb a minute to transfer the less time spent waiting around for this the better.

Ah this thread has turned into an STW bloodbath… maybe I should admit partial responsibility

What was the question again?

Here’s the answer.. chillax don’t buy anything… save the money for a TVR or something mental

unless you are moving more than 10gb at a time then stick with usb.
the initial 150gb you back-up is going to take an age but you are hopefully only doing this the once.

yes if you need to back up 40-50gb before leaving a shoot location (you do this because you have had hard drives in laptops fail) will also get a thunderbolt cardreader too if/when they become available.

That makes sense. Can you get anything that writes to two drives at the same time, sort of portable raid set up that uses something plugged in?

will use an ssd scratch disk for photoshop and a back-up for final cut

What’s the sustained write speed of that SSD? Fastest one I’ve played with could write at 130MB/s sustained, and even using conservative maths SATA 3G (“SATA II”) can handle twice that.

this thread has turned into an STW bloodbath

Healthy and interesting discussion, far as I can see.