Anybody got one of these? .. an external SATA drive.

I woundering how *fast* they are (sustained x-fer rates) .. in general, and for Ghost in particular.

I would expect them to be nearly as fast as an internal SATA .. no?

Numbers?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148239

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/freeagent_pro_data_movers/

Rad, this article may be of interest:  Cool 2.5" Storage By Hitachi, Seagate, Toshiba.  It specifically discusses the Seagate FreeAgent Go product, too.

I have always assumed that eSATA is as fast as SATA, but don’t know this for sure.

Rad wrote on Jun 27^th, 2007 at 6:21pm:

"... an external SATA drive... I wondering how *fast* they are (sustained x-fer rates) .. in general, and for Ghost in particular..."

El_Pescador wrote on May 15^th, 2005 at 12:02am:

Well, I have turned up another USB 2.0 device controller that requires NightOwl's Universal Panasonic USB Driver to be able to function in Norton Ghost 2003.  The PPA Metal Gear Box Model 2179780SAU2 combo USB 2.0/SATA external HDD enclosure kit has 'USB\Vid_067b&Pid_2507...' as Hardware Id in Device Manager.  Be advised that only IDE/ATA HDDs will work in this unique device - SATA HDDs will not fit. In the USB 2.0 mode, Ghost 2003 was totally dysfunctional in PC-DOS using the Norton/Iomega USB drivers.  With the Panasonic drivers, the Western Digital IDE drive was functional only in the FAT32 file system format - and just barely so with the Intel onboard USB host controllers (see table below). Switching to SATA mode was a totally different story for the combo enclosure kit.  As evident in the table, the IDE-to-SATA conversion was just a couple of minutes slower than a native SATA NCQ HDD mounted in a conventional SATA enclosure for comparison purposes when both were tested in sequence while connected to the same SATA port on the systemboard. Regrettably, it turned out later that Norton Ghost 2003 operations are subtly corrupted crossing the IDE-to-SATA bridge chipset when running in the SATA mode, but not in the USB 2.0 mode.

 
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v235/El_Pescador/eekMG.jpg

Update:  All four columns above reflect the same desktop PC with the same source MASTER HDD undergoing a Norton Ghost 2003 "(whole)disk-to-image" Backup in the Windows XP GUI mode.  The first three columns have the PPA Metal Gear Box Model 2179780SAU2 combo USB 2.0/SATA external HDD enclosure kit housing the same 80GB Western Digital internal IDE HDD throughout as the destination HDD while the last column has a Kingwin SS-350S-BK pure SATA external HDD enclosure kit outfitted with an 80GB Seagate SATA/NCQ internal HDD (take note that the file system format for both destination HDDs is FAT32).  Of considerable interest is that the onboard USB port required a full two hours to perform a backup while the PCI-to-USB port required slightly over 32 minutes to complete essentially the same task.

Both SATA external connections were directly connected to the same SATA port on the systemboard.  The true SATA NCQ HDD setup completed the task in slightly under 18 minutes which is admittedly better than either USB perfomance but is certainly no quantum improvement.  Since the hybrid IDE HDD/SATA connected enclosure kit yielded a Backup image that failed a subsequent Integrity Check some time later, its seemingly decent time turned out to be of no consequence.     

EP :'(

Rad, did you purchase and test one of these Seagate FreeAgent drives?  Which model?  What were your observations?

Thanks!

Rad wrote on Jun 27^th, 2007 at 6:21pm:

Anybody got one of these? .. an external SATA drive.

We have some eSATA enclosures here, my friend across the hall has a few attached to the same machine that is running a 12-port 3Ware raid controller (which is a thing of beauty).

As you'd expect, eSATA is just as fast as SATA. However, eSATA has all the same kind of transitional issues that USB2 had. Because eSATA changes the power and signaling on the cables subtly, first-generation SATA controllers don't provide the right environment - I've seen eSATA connectors put into older systems that don't meet the electrical specs properly to start with. They may "work" to some extent, but it's really marginal.

So, it's well worth making really, really sure that the controllers are guaranteed eSATA-aware, and to use good quality cabling - eSATA cables need extra shielding over SATA and I wouldn't try to save a couple bucks by using cheaper cables, and more so the longer the cable run is.

wrote on Sep 5^th, 2007 at 6:07pm:

I've seen eSATA connectors put into older systems that don't meet the electrical specs properly to start with. They may "work" to some extent, but it's really marginal.

nbree,

I guess that explains why I got "Delayed Write Failed" errors with a Dell Dimension 8400 when transferring large files.

On cables and connectors ...

http://www.sata-io.org/esata.asp

Does Norton Ghost 2003 and/or Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.0 work well in DOS with an eSATA hard disk drive?  With an internal SATA hard disk drive in an external enclosure?

What additional steps, if any, are required to write/read a .GHO backup image onto a SATA drive through DOS?

Pleonasm wrote on Sep 11^th, 2007 at 5:46pm:

"... Does Norton Ghost 2003 and/or Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.0 work well in DOS with an eSATA hard disk drive?  With an internal SATA hard disk drive in an external enclosure? What additional steps, if any, are required to write/read a .GHO backup image onto a SATA drive through DOS?..."

I can only speak of my pre-Katrina experience with an internal SATA hard disk drive in an external enclosure.  Despite its detached location and having its own power supply, the external SATA HDD was treated by the OS (XP Home Edition) as if it were an internally-mounted drive and thus behaved in the typical fashion of Norton Ghost 2003 for such a setup.  I cannot address anything eSATA.

El Pescador

Pleonasm,

I used Ghost 2003 to create two images of a small OS partition. I used Fast compression, wrote images to internal SATA HD and eSATA HD. Image size on each HD was 884 MB.

Time for internal SATA HD was 93 seconds.

Time for eSATA HD was 93 seconds.

Nice to know they perform identically.

El_Pescador and Brian, thanks for the posting your insights and the results of your tests.  It appears that Norton Ghost 2003 is SATA/eSATA compatible.