[ale] SATA PCI card or external USB enclosures?

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

Alex Carver <agcarver+ale at acarver.net> wrote:

>On 3/4/2013 12:45, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>>
>>
>> Calvin Harrigan <charriglists at bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On 3/4/2013 3:04 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>>>> I don't have any experience with PCI cards for this.  For
>enclosures,
>>> I
>>>> like the Vantec brand.  Quality seems to be good.  Some of them
>have
>>>> fans for cooling.
>>>>
>>>> Ron
>>>>
>>>> On 3/3/2013 2:47 PM, Alex Carver wrote:
>>>>> Anyone have a suggestion for a good but not too expensive SATA PCI
>>>>> (not express) card and/or external USB-SATA enclosure?  The
>>> enclosure
>>>>> for my backup drive just died (the drive seems fine...I hope).  I
>>> just
>>>>> need to pop it into a new box or just slip another card into the
>>> case
>>>>> (mobo has only IDE, no SATA).
>>> +1 for Vantec
>>> I have several, all several years old, none have failed to date.
>>>
>>
>> Another PS.  If you use a sata-usb enclosure, you can connect via
>usb.  No PCI card needed.
>>
>
>I know, the Bytecc was a combo USB/SATA box.  But I was pondering the 
>speed boost by going for SATA and moving the drive inside the machine. 
>I'm still pondering the choice though I may just go with the external 
>USB for simplicity.  The reason for the PCI card is because I have no 
>SATA on my system so I would have to add on.
>

Hi Alex,

The fastest transfer I've gotten on an external USB2 interface is about 30 - 35 MBps.  According to

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

The effective throughput for USB2 is 35 MBps.  In this case, the bus is being saturated.

With USB3, you get a throughput of 625 MBps on the interface according to the same article.  

According to this article on SATA

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

With SATA2, you get 300 MBps and with SATA3, you get 600 MBps.

HOWEVER, the drive is going to be your limiting factor.  I have SATA2 ports in my desktop machine and SATA spinning hard drives.  The fastest drive to drive transfer I've ever gotten is in the 75 MBps range.  So, with a spinning HDD, you could probably double your transfer speed by going to internal or external SATA or USB3.  If you had an SSD, which, choosing one at random from a magazine I have, reports read and write speeds in the 500 MBps range, you could saturate a SATA2 bus and come close to saturating a SATA3 or USB3 bus.

Sincerely,

Ron




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Ron Frazier
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