eSata drive on MBP
I have had four external drive, and they were all quite full. So, I needed to buy a new one that I could bring to Germany in April. After some research, I found Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EACS (SATA2/16M) most interesting. For external case, I wanted to buy something fancy. What I’ve found was Sarotech HardBox FHD-354USF, which had USB, Firewere, and eSata connection. I thought it would be useful to have those three options, because USB is the most universal, FireWire is faster and more stable, and eSata is supposed to be very fast. I paid USD 140 for the case and HDD in Korea.
When the hard drive arrived, I connected it to my MBP using USB, and copied 7.3GB DVD image file. It took 5 min 12 sec. Not bad. With FireWire connection, it took 3 min 50 sec. Not bad at all… Then I connected it using eSata, and it took… 2 min 21 sec! Wow, It was more than twice faster than USB connection. Before I bought it, I was a little bit worried about using eSata, because I was so used to USB and FireWire. But, when I saw the test result, there was no doubt in my mind that I would use eSata connection exclusively.
Using eSata on an MBP is not difficult. You just need to buy a case with eSata connection, and also an eSata express 34 card (eSata cable should come with the external case). I bought Netmate C-230 eSata card for $15. When I inserted the card onto the express slot, my MBP recognized the express card, and the HDD was mounted autometically. No driver or setup was necessary (but you may have to install driver first if you use different model. Check if the card is mac compatible first). One good thing about this particular model is that it supports booting on OSX, which means you can boot from eSata drive. There are many other models that does not support booting, so if you want the functionality, check it first.
Even though not as popular as USB or FireWire, eSata seems to be a very promising technology. Since files are getting bigger everyday, you need faster transfer speed. And eSata can provide it for you.
