USB 3, Gigabit Ethernet or SATA III hard drives in eSata dock?

[holygamer]

My motherboard supports USB 3.0, SATA III & eSata 6Gbps and Gigabit ethernet.

I work with videos a lot so I have currently have several 4TB USB 3.0 hard drives. I'm fed up with the problems with USB such as random disconnecting and slow transfer speeds. For example I see the transfer speed reported by Windows is around 90-120 MB/s but using a program I found out what I always suspected - the real transfer speed is around 60 MB/s. It seems that even Windows 8 with it's native USB 3 drivers has even more problems (I'm using Windows 7).

So I don't think a USB 3.0 hard drive is a good idea. I was thinking about getting Sata III hard drives and connecting them via an eSATA 6gbps RocketStor 5322 Hard Drive Dock that way I can truly get around 100MB/s transfer speed like I can with my internal SATA III hard drives. Or would gigabit Ethernet hard drives be a better option?

What transfer speed would Gigabit Ethernet give?

I have a fibre broadband connection with 76 Mbps download speed and 19 Mbps upload speed and my router is connected to my PC via gigabit ethernet. If I had a gigabit Ethernet hard drive and I copied data at the full speed supported by Gigabit ethernet then would that slow down my internet connection?

[Phage]

I'm a bit of a noob on this, but I suspect that the fastest would be some sort of RAID 0 internally through SATA3.
Ethernet speeds vary according to the switch, and what else the network is doing, plus the ability of the hardware to process at that speed. My little NAS on Giga Ethernet tops out at ~50mbs, USB 3 100mbs.

If you,re using the switch as a modem/router with many connections it probably only has a max backplane of Giga, so that would be shared amongst all the connections. If its just you, then no it won't slow down your fibre.

If it must be external, then I think eSATA would be the fastest. I'm sure a real engineer will be along to correct me on the above if if its not quite right !

[Funkstar]

I have a fibre broadband connection with 76 Mbps download speed and 19 Mbps upload speed and my router is connected to my PC via gigabit ethernet. If I had a gigabit Ethernet hard drive and I copied data at the full speed supported by Gigabit ethernet then would that slow down my internet connection?

Internet connection has no bearing on your internal network. In theory saturating a gigabit connection would slow down internet access on the PC you are using, in all likely hood this won't happen though 76meg is so much lower than the gigabit network that you will only see a slight dip in network transfer speed while doing a large download from the internet.

Max real world speed of gigabit network transfers is about 60-70MB/sec. Using an off the shelf NAS or ethernet connected hard drive, you will be exceptionally lucky to get that. When I had my server up and running I could get that, but it was between two full blown PCs. Consumer NAS boxes are pretty ham strung.

Stick to SATA, much quicker.

[holygamer]

Thanks. I'll go with SATA III hard drives in an Highpoint RocketStor 5322 eSata 6gbps dual dock then. I only have 1 eSATA port on my PC. I need a 6Gbps eSATA card with at least two ports but preferably as many as possible. Is there any expansion card you could recommend? It seems the Highpoint RocketStor 5322 dock is a great product but their eSATA cards don't have good reviews.

I would eventually like to have several hard drives connected to my PC at the same time via eSATA as there will be videos on them that I need to access quite frequently. However I don't want to have to buy several docks as they cost £150 each! And I preferably don't want to have several power supplies plugged in at once to power the hard drives.

Because hard drives eventually die after several years, instead of losing money in replacing the drives what I do is take a frequently used drive that's nearly dead and replace it with a new drive. I then use the old drive for backups. I only use the old drive with a dock instead of having it plugged in all the time and once it's full I will rarely use it again so it'll last forever.

So basically I will have a dual eSATA 6Gbps dock for backups but I need a different eSATA 6Gbps solution for having several drives plugged in at the same time, preferably without needing to use several power cables. Is there anything like that or would I need to get a Gigabit ethernet NAS?

[Phage]

With a cable connection at 76mbs, what about some sort of cloud solution ?

[holygamer]

What would you suggest?

[liammcd]

eSATA is likely to be the most efficient, fastest and cheapest option all in one, particularly if you have already tried and rejected USB3, but there are a few gotcha's to watch out for.

Firstly, you can pick up brackets that sit in a spare blanking plate at the back of the PC that present an internal SATA port as an eSATA one - the motherboard won't care either way. So you don't need a new controller card unless you have run out of ports on the motherboard.

If you browse through Scan's offerings, you can find a selection of hot-swap cradles that need their own external power supply but this can be turned off when not in use.

http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-...port-hdd-docks

Some of these offer both USB3 and eSATA, although the majority of the eSATA offerings are 'just' SATA II, ie 3Gbs rather than the theoretical 5Gbs of USB3.

The eSATA hot-swap facility presupposes you have installed your OS with AHCI support which is a power-management standard that allows the OS to hot-swap data drives. (You say you have Windows 7 so this is likely).

You would also need some way to safely store bare drives when not plugged into a cradle.

But none of the above is difficult.

You mention transfer speeds reported by Windows as if you are expecting something much faster. When using mechanical HDDs, you are quite likely to run into a performance bottleneck from the drive regardless of the interface used unless you have SSDs or hybrid drives. Have you seen much faster performance to encourage you to aim higher?

[liammcd]

You may also like to consider the option of a new case which includes one or two hot-swap HDD ports on the front, such as the X-Dock equipped Cooler Master range, eg.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/coole...front-2x-x-doc

That has a pair which will plug into SATA ports on your motherboard and allow inserted disks to act as normal internal HDDs.

[davidt99]

Isn't esata slower than usb3?

[liammcd]

Theory says that USB3 can get up to 5Gb/s while eSata gives you whatever your motherboard supports. SATA III means 6Gb/s.

In the real world, there isn't a lot in it and the combination of hardware and driver can make more difference.