eSATA still beats USB 3.0

Posted on Monday, February 08 2010 @ 19:52 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck

Crunchgear compared the performance of several eSATA and USB 3.0 storage devices and concludes that, at least for now, eSATA is still the fastest external interface.

This will likely change over the next few years as computer hardware catches up to USB 3.0. The situation is nothing new. Most up and coming technology is limited by current hardware. USB 2.0 went through the same thing years ago. But if you’re looking for a reliable and fast external hard drive right now, forget USB 3.0 and instead look at eSATA drives.

About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.

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Re: eSATA still beats USB 3.0
by Anonymous on Tuesday, February 09 2010 @ 4:43 CET

Bad test. The details are sketchy, but the test uses a pc card based esata, which likely has bandwidth issues going into the notebook as pc cards max is barely half the USB 3 spec. And with overhead it probably doesn't even hit that.

ESATA on notebooks however has a direct channel to the DMI and hend the other ports and CPU. It's going to be faster simply by virtue of it's connection. An internal notebook NEC controller on a pci-e x1 2.0 channel is going to show dramatically better results. Try one of the new HP's or the Dell M6500 with USB 3 and you'll see quite a different story.

USB 3 is at LEAST as fast as ESATA and likely 2-3x as fast when SSD's go into mobile docks. Couple that with the convenience of a single cable power connection and ESATA is so last century.

This is one article to not believe all you read.

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