I currently back up my photos using two external drives in eSATA enclosures. I connect them to my laptop with a dual eSATA ExpressCard adapter. One drive lives at work, and the other at home. I usually have at least two copies of everything, stored in different locations.
Anyway, I'm currently waiting for a new laptop to be delivered, an HP dv6t Quad Edition. This laptop doesn't have an eSATA port, nor an ExpressCard slot.
I'm trying to decide how to attach my backup drives to the new laptop. I can either switch them into new USB3 cases, or use eSATA to USB3 adapter cables (BYTECC and Vantec each make one, for about $15).
Buying two adapter cables for about $30 is less than half the cost of getting new enclosures, and it would preserve the fast eSATA connections so I could continue to use the drives on my current laptop (which only has USB2). So I'm planning on the cable route.
Sounds like you've thought it through pretty well.
My preference would be to put the drive in new USB 3.0 cases (they're currently $15 at the Microcenter a few blocks away from my office but I just bought a couple the other day for $10) and buy a new USB 3.0 expresscard for the old notebook (Newegg has one for only $13). That's only $33-$43 for new enclosures and a new expresscard
I just realized you didn't mention if they're 2.5" of 3.5" drives. The enclosures referenced were for 2.5" drives. 3.5" enclosures are more expensive which would make the cable route the most cost efficient.
You got me psyched and I was going to check out the MicroCenter here in Cambridge, but yeah, they are 3.5-inch 1.5TB drives. Good USB3 enclosures with fans are about $30 each from Newegg.
I hadn't thought of the USB3 ExpressCard for my old laptop to maintain compatibility - that's a great idea.
From a speed standpoint, do you think there is a difference keeping the eSATA cases and connecting with the USB3 adapter cable, versus switching over to USB3 enclosures? I think these are eSATAII drives, and I assumed any speed difference would be negligible.
I'm not sure i'd go with SATA-USB adapter cables. Many of the advantages of the SATA protocol will not be supported over a USB connection, and i'd worry that a cheap adapter would give relatively poor performance by offering only the most basic functionality of both protocols. If its just for backup though, i might be ok.
Oct 07, 2012 at 01:40 AM
Lars Johnsson Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: Off
I belive you will loose the fast e-Sata speed when using the e-SATA to USB3 adapter cables. I have a couple of Drobo's with both e-Sata and USB 3. And e-Sata is faster. And using an adapter cable will probably make it slower also
I doubt that the interface speed matters all that much when you are dealing with single drives because both eSATA and USB 3 will easily outpace the physical drive transfer speeds when dealing with small files such as photos.
Oct 13, 2012 at 03:27 PM
Lars Johnsson Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: Off
msalvetti wrote:
I currently back up my photos using two external drives in eSATA enclosures. I connect them to my laptop with a dual eSATA ExpressCard adapter. One drive lives at work, and the other at home. I usually have at least two copies of everything, stored in different locations.
Anyway, I'm currently waiting for a new laptop to be delivered, an HP dv6t Quad Edition. This laptop doesn't have an eSATA port, nor an ExpressCard slot.
I'm trying to decide how to attach my backup drives to the new laptop. I can either switch them into new USB3 cases, or use eSATA to USB3 adapter cables (BYTECC and Vantec each make one, for about $15).
Buying two adapter cables for about $30 is less than half the cost of getting new enclosures, and it would preserve the fast eSATA connections so I could continue to use the drives on my current laptop (which only has USB2). So I'm planning on the cable route....Show more →
Both methods are essentially the same. The difference is whether the SATA-USB 3 bridge is in an adapter/cable brick or in a HD enclosure. I agree with your preference being the most versatile, assuming the bridge product functions as intended.
Thanks everyone. Sorry, I lost track of this thread.
I was worried about the cables not providing full speed as well, and it also occurred to me that perhaps with the single drive in each enclosure, the drive itself was the bottleneck.
I ended up ordering the cables. New laptop is due to arrive Thursday. I'll try to compare the speeds and report back.
msalvetti wrote:
I was worried about the cables not providing full speed as well, and it also occurred to me that perhaps with the single drive in each enclosure, the drive itself was the bottleneck.
Both the drive and the operating system, which makes it much slower to deal with many small files than to deal with the same amount of data in a single file. RAID setups can speed up transfers but not the file access times. SSDs will speed up both.
