External Harddrive

[Nabobalis]

So I got my self an external harddrive however I can not get it detected on e-sata. I connected by usb and formated a partition on the drive but when I plug in the e-sata cable into my motherboard I get nothing.

I'm sure that my e-sata controller is set up correctly. I don't know what else to do? It works fine over usb.

On another note, got 2Gb ram for my laptop and found out it has only one slot. !!!!

[peterb]

If you boot the PC with the Esata drive connected, is it seen? It may be that your mobo doesn't (or isn't configured to) support hot plugging sata drives.

[Nabobalis]

If you boot the PC with the Esata drive connected, is it seen? It may be that your mobo doesn't (or isn't configured to) support hot plugging sata drives.

Ok will try. I think I tried. Memory is a bit rusty.

[camalbitboy]

Also have you checked that your e-sata port is enabled in BIOS? Some pc's come with them default to off as a security measure.

[Nabobalis]

Rebooted with the drive connected and it was found. Shame its not plug and play e-sata

[peterb]

You may be able to change the bios settings to enable hot swap functionality, but from what I recall from other threads, it is arelatively obscure setting - something to do with setting up ACPI or the HPTC. The mobo manual might help, or the mobo mfr website.

(I have the same situation with my mobo, but USB2 is fast enough for what I need so I haven't bothered investigating further)

[Nabobalis]

You may be able to change the bios settings to enable hot swap functionality, but from what I recall from other threads, it is arelatively obscure setting - something to do with setting up ACPI or the HPTC. The mobo manual might help, or the mobo mfr website.

(I have the same situation with my mobo, but USB2 is fast enough for what I need so I haven't bothered investigating further)

Thanks, I will look through the manual. But how fast should the transfers be? I mean it says its going to take an hour and a half for 100Gb.

[peterb]

What OS are you using?

The spec for USB2 states that the maximum speed it is capable of is 480Mb/s which equates (roughly) to about 50MBytes/sec or 1GB in 20 seconds. By that calculation 100GB would take about 34 minutes.

However in practice you will get less than that because of overheads in the filing system and OS which all limit throughput. An hour wouldn't be unreasonable, although there are are lots of variaboles that can affect that, including the efficiency of the USB to SATA converter, which may be the slowest link in the chain.

If you are using Vista, it is known for slow file transfer speeds.

[Nabobalis]

Yeah Vista. 22.6 MB/S

[SiM]

What OS are you using?

The spec for USB2 states that the maximum speed it is capable of is 480Mb/s which equates (roughly) to about 50MBytes/sec or 1GB in 20 seconds. By that calculation 100GB would take about 34 minutes.

Thats the burst speed, not the sustainable transfer speed. Same with sata300... you don't actually get 300gbit sustainable speed!