31st July 2012
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#1 | | Gear Head
Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 56
Thread Starter | eSATA or USB 3.0?
So, my darn 2TB Seagate POS external drive (5400 or 7200rpm? Who knows!) has finally crapped out on me. I have a feeling it wasn't the best drive for audio production anyway 
Meaning I'm in the market for a new external drive. And I'm stuck between USB 3.0 or eSATA. There are some great eSATA connectable drives around, like the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Quad Interface, but there are also some nice USB 3.0 drives around as well.
My Dell Studio XPS tower doesn't have USB 3.0 ports, but I could always throw a PCI Express interface in there for $30 or so. However, I'd rather not have to do that, if an eSATA drive would do just as well. Begging the question: which would suit me best? A little background:
My audio needs aren't that huge. I never record more than one track of audio at once, and to be honest my tunes never really exceed five or six tracks of audio. Mainly, I use VI's. I would have the Komplete Ultimate library on this drive though.
Looking around, I can't really find a definite answer as to which comes out on top speed-wise, in fact one article I read concluded that eSATA wins on reads, while USB 3.0 wins on writes, by about the same amount each way (or vice-versa).
As for my DAW, well I've been using Pro Tools (so I know eSATA isn't officially supported, although I've heard people use it just fine) but I'm thinking about ditching PT for Sonar X1, which I've been trialing (and I love it).
Any suggestions?
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31st July 2012
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#2 | | Gear interested
Joined: Jul 2012
Posts: 22
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Speed wise usb 3.0 imo, as I just built a new computer I couldn't make it w/o usb 3.0, but that's just me but id say usb 3.0 as its faster n newer, if u don't wanna do the pci (my case n motherboard have it already) then esata would do
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31st July 2012
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#4 | | Gear Head
Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 56
Thread Starter | Quote:
Originally Posted by Masaaki  | Looks interesting, although one of the reviews says that the unit has disappointing eSATA transfer rates. I'm tempted to go for it if not just to see if my current drive can be salvaged.
I'm thinking external for portability, really. I don't have the frequent need to move my HD, but I can think of two occasions in the past year when I've ended up having to travel with it. Maybe I'll look into adding a 2nd internal though. The funny thing is, when I called DELL earlier to ask them questions about the USB 3.0 interface they sell, the subject turned to internal drives, and the guy on the phone was insistent that while I could add a 2nd internal, I wouldn't be able to access them both simultaneously. To be honest I didn't have the heart to delve into the matter further with him - some of those DELL guys are nuts | |
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31st July 2012
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#5 | | Gear Head
Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 56
Thread Starter | Quote:
Originally Posted by LiLAjBeatz Speed wise usb 3.0 imo, as I just built a new computer I couldn't make it w/o usb 3.0, but that's just me but id say usb 3.0 as its faster n newer, if u don't wanna do the pci (my case n motherboard have it already) then esata would do | I'm thinking that even if USB 3.0 is faster, do I really need that extra speed? IOW, would eSATA be more than enough speed for my needs? Bearing in mind this is strictly a cheap home hobbyist setup. I'm not going to be recording bands or anything like that.
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31st July 2012
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#7 | | Gear addict
Joined: Jan 2012 Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Posts: 427
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USB 3.0 for speed and popularity.
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31st July 2012
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#8 | | Gear Head
Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 56
Thread Starter | Quote:
Originally Posted by soundsfromsound | Looks like a bargain to be honest.
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31st July 2012
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#10 | | Gear Head
Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 56
Thread Starter | Quote:
Originally Posted by BassDuck | To be fair that article is over 2 years old, I wonder how much things have changed since then.
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31st July 2012
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#11 | | Lives for gear
Joined: Jul 2010 Location: Mountain US
Posts: 1,727
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That's probably still true. I have the eSATA dock here (the one I linked above), and WD Black 7200RPM 500GB (3.5in) HD goes like 130MB/s (CrystalDiskmark, seq r/w 1GB file). On the same machine (thinkpad w520), using USB3.0 port, and Hitachi Touro 500GB 7200RPM (2.5in) HD goes like 80MB/s. Both of them are more than sufficient for usual audio work, as BassDuck already said.
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31st July 2012
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#12 | | Gear Head
Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 56
Thread Starter |
What about having two separate audio drives, one for recording and one for VI samples....recommended? I'm open to it if so. Only thing is, I don't think my Dell will take more than one extra drive, so one of the drives would have to be external. Would it matter which one (audio or samples)?
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31st July 2012
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#13 | | Lives for gear
Joined: Nov 2004 Location: Stavenisse
Posts: 1,841
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Two disks for audio and samples is a smart move. Internal would be recommended. If you google your DELL you can see how many SATA ports it really has. But a minimum of 4 SATA ports is common these days.
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31st July 2012
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#14 | | Gear addict
Joined: Jul 2008
Posts: 362
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I have an external drive on eSATA (also WD Black 7200RPM, but 750GB) and under normal file operations, in windows 7 it shows speeds from over 100MB/s to 60 sustained. I haven't tried my USB 3.0 ports yet.
__________________ I like details, lots and lots of details...
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31st July 2012
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#15 | | Gear Head
Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 56
Thread Starter | Quote:
Originally Posted by TheLoud1Please I have an external drive on eSATA (also WD Black 7200RPM, but 750GB) and under normal file operations, in windows 7 it shows speeds from over 100MB/s to 60 sustained. I haven't tried my USB 3.0 ports yet. | I don't think you can get WD externals anymore that aren't these new power saving "green" baloney. In fact there's a page on the WD site which says that they cannot guarantee spin speeds on their externals and that it's basically pot luck. New Egg will list them as 7200, but they're wrong.
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31st July 2012
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#16 | | Lives for gear
Joined: Jul 2010 Location: Mountain US
Posts: 1,727
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That's why I suggested using eSATA dock + bare drive designed for internal gives you sustained read/write performance. That's important for recording PT sessions.
True, the Thermaltake dock has a review saying eSATA speed isn't good enough, but the reviewer used SSD for the test. Transfer speed dropped from 530MB/s to 120MB/s when it was swapped from internal SATA 6Gb/s port to eSATA dock. That's not good if you want to use SSD via eSATA port at full speed. But most of the 7200RPM HD's read/write speed is somewhere around 120-130MB/s anyway (some goes up to 150MB/s) via SATA 3Gb/s, and I just got the 130MB/s using the Thermaltake dock. Isn't that good enough for you? If the portability of the HD is required, you can always put the bare drive in a cheap USB2.0 external drive enclosure (will take just 3 minutes), and you can put it in a suitcase.
By the way, I'm going to test this bare drive dock soon: Newegg.com - VANTEC NexStar NST-D300SU3 Plastic 2.5" & 3.5" USB3.0 & eSATA SuperSpeed Hard Drive Dock
If I find significant performance difference from Thermaltake dock, I'll report back here.
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1st August 2012
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#17 | | Gear addict
Joined: May 2008 Location: Toronto, Canada
Posts: 471
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Beware that not all USB 3 docks play nice with all USB 3 drivers. I ended up returning a couple of different USB 3 docks and going back to eSata, which seems to be the more mature tech. ymmv
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1st August 2012
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#18 | | Gear addict
Joined: Jul 2008
Posts: 362
| Quote:
Originally Posted by sharke I don't think you can get WD externals anymore that aren't these new power saving "green" baloney. In fact there's a page on the WD site which says that they cannot guarantee spin speeds on their externals and that it's basically pot luck. New Egg will list them as 7200, but they're wrong. | I bought an enclosure with the Oxford chipset in it, and installed the drive of my choice.
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1st August 2012
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#19 | | Gear Head
Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 56
Thread Starter |
I ended up buying a 2TB WD Caviar (black) which I figure should be good enough for my purposes. I'm going to get an external at a later date -- right now I just need to get a drive up and running.
Quick questions for the boffins: Even though this drive is supposedly SATA 3 (6gbps), I don't need a cable that's labeled SATA 3 do I? I'm given to thinking the cables are all the same and the SATA 3 label is just marketing hype.
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1st August 2012
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#20 | | Lives for gear
Joined: Jul 2010 Location: Mountain US
Posts: 1,727
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No, you should buy a Monster ultra-wide bandwidth, super high performance, extra-low digital noise SATAIII cable that has gold contacts, and cost at least $50 a piece------just kiddin'
They are all the same. You might need right-angled, or left angled connector on one end, depending on the motherboard's connectors or drive bay location.
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1st August 2012
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#21 | | Gear maniac
Joined: Jul 2012
Posts: 200
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I have had zero problems with USB3 since it came out. I've tried many different drives, headers, controllers, and mobos.
You should be fine with it, imo.
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1st August 2012
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#22 | | Gear addict
Joined: Jul 2008
Posts: 362
| Quote:
Originally Posted by sharke I ended up buying a 2TB WD Caviar (black) which I figure should be good enough for my purposes. I'm going to get an external at a later date -- right now I just need to get a drive up and running.
Quick questions for the boffins: Even though this drive is supposedly SATA 3 (6gbps), I don't need a cable that's labeled SATA 3 do I? I'm given to thinking the cables are all the same and the SATA 3 label is just marketing hype. | SATA3 isn't marketing hype. They put that on packaging so the consumer knows it will work with their hardware.
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1st August 2012
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#23 | | Lives for gear
Joined: Mar 2005 Location: Denver CO
Posts: 1,713
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The plug on the back of any standard drive is sata. Inside a usb3 enclosure it only converts usb3 to sata. In the computer world it's going to always be better, especially where latency is an issue not to have to go through the conversion as it's only one more thing that can go wrong (drivers, chip failure power supply etc).
That's my opinion/experience at at least. Sometimes the adapter does the job but if you can avoid it you probably should,
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1st August 2012
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#24 | | Lives for gear
Joined: Mar 2005 Location: Denver CO
Posts: 1,713
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Originally Posted by TheLoud1Please SATA3 isn't marketing hype. They put that on packaging so the consumer knows it will work with their hardware. | 6gbps is 750MB/s (8 bits in a byte). Unless you are connecting a state of the art ssd or sas it's definitely marketing hype. All sata drives are backward comparable.
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2nd August 2012
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#25 | | Gear addict
Joined: Jul 2008
Posts: 362
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Originally Posted by RyanC 6gbps is 750MB/s (8 bits in a byte). Unless you are connecting a state of the art ssd or sas it's definitely marketing hype. All sata drives are backward comparable. | UH, NO... it's the theoretical limit of the hardware which is higher than on SATA 1.5 and 3, obvi... NOT hype. And, yes I do have a state of the art SSD on SATA 6gbps. And you meant to say compatible, I believe.
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2nd August 2012
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#26 | | Lives for gear
Joined: Jul 2010 Location: Mountain US
Posts: 1,727
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Sharke was talking about marketing hype of SATA-III cables, not the drive or bus speed itself. There are SATA cables labeled as "SATA-III cable", and they are more expensive than generic SATA cables (SATA-I/II). I tested 5 or 6 of those SATA-III cables, and did disk benchmark tests with SSD/HDD (on SATA 6Gb/s bus), and compared the number when those drives were connected by generic SATA-I/II cables. The numbers were exactly the same. My conclusion is 'SATA-III' cables are just marketing hype, and you can connect SATA-III drives using SATA-I/II cables without compromizing the performance.
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2nd August 2012
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#27 | | Gear addict
Joined: Jul 2008
Posts: 362
| Quote:
Originally Posted by Masaaki Sharke was talking about marketing hype of SATA-III cables, not the drive or bus speed itself. There are SATA cables labeled as "SATA-III cable", and they are more expensive than generic SATA cables (SATA-I/II). I tested 5 or 6 of those SATA-III cables, and did disk benchmark tests with SSD/HDD (on SATA 6Gb/s bus), and compared the number when those drives were connected by generic SATA-I/II cables. The numbers were exactly the same. My conclusion is 'SATA-III' cables are just marketing hype, and you can connect SATA-III drives using SATA-I/II cables without compromizing the performance. | Oh, I'm sorry I misunderstood what he meant. Yeah I just bought some high-quality molex brand SATA cables years ago and use them for my new SSD.
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2nd August 2012
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#28 | | Gear Head
Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 56
Thread Starter | Quote:
Originally Posted by Masaaki Sharke was talking about marketing hype of SATA-III cables, not the drive or bus speed itself. There are SATA cables labeled as "SATA-III cable", and they are more expensive than generic SATA cables (SATA-I/II). I tested 5 or 6 of those SATA-III cables, and did disk benchmark tests with SSD/HDD (on SATA 6Gb/s bus), and compared the number when those drives were connected by generic SATA-I/II cables. The numbers were exactly the same. My conclusion is 'SATA-III' cables are just marketing hype, and you can connect SATA-III drives using SATA-I/II cables without compromizing the performance. | Great, because I've just done exactly that!
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2nd August 2012
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#29 | | Lives for gear
Joined: Mar 2009 Location: California
Posts: 1,187
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Regardless where this thread has gone I say USB 3.0 all the way. Mainly because it can power the device, I don't think eSata can.
Sent from my LG-P925 using Gearslutz App
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8th August 2012
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#30 | | Lives for gear
Joined: Jul 2010 Location: Mountain US
Posts: 1,727
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I have updated some disk benchmark numbers using 7200rpm hard drives and eSATA/USB3 docking bays. External hard drives for PC laptops | |
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