Storage - eSata now vs USB 6.0 vs LAN connect

HUGH

Newbie Location: Canada Joined: Jan 26, 2010 23:41 Messages: 15 Offline

Solved by

Jan 28, 2010 11:24

Gentlemen - first let me say, as a newbie, this forum is outstanding. Quite the oppositte of Cyberlinks support

I'm just switching over to Wintel/Power Director from Mac. I need to make some investment in external storage - probably 2 - 2T drives or 2 - 1T drives (loading 20 years of video). Deciding between eSata, NAS or waiting for USB 6.0 and would like your thoughts.

I am using an HP Pavillion DV7 laptop with 2 internal .5T drives, i7 Inel, Nvidia (sp?) graphics, 8gig ram. I have an eSata port, an expansion slot and a USB 2.0 port as well as an HDMI port.

I want to keep on complete copy off site. And I want a local copy to backup the HP. I think I will endup with more than 1T in data if I follow the sugestion of copying all necessary material into a separate folder (which I like by the way).

So - my question: I'm loving eSata compared to firewire 400 that I was using on Mac. I'm finding it averaging 5X the speed on big transfers. Before I go out and buy two big eSata boxes, do you think I should wait for USB 3.0 (assuming I can get an expansion card)?

I have done some research on setting up a wired LAN (I'm wireless today but wouldn't be a big deal to run a lan wire) and setting up some Networked Attached Storage. Its not clear to me that this is any faster than eSata. For me the simplicity of having it all backed up automatically is offset by the technology complexity of setting up a NAS. Also, I like being able to move around - if I want work in another room, outside or at the cottage, I can just grab my external drive and bring it along (assuming it has source footage that I don't have on my internal drives). I see that folks are setting up things like WD TV devices to play their media on HD TV, but I don't have that issue since my laptop has an HDMI out port.

I could do some work arounds in the interim using storage I have and by not having an offsite solution for now.

Thoughts?
PowerDirector 8, PowerDVD10
Sony HDR-CX110 Full HD AVCHD
Panasonic DMC-Z3S camera (AVCHD lite - 720p)
Gateway, i3 cpu, ATI 5650 graphics, 4Gig ram, windows 7

And a Sony DV and a Cannon 8mm to boot.

ynotfish

Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Offline

Jan 28, 2010 15:41

Hugh -

I'm currently looking at different external storage media, and trying to learn about it. I'll be interested to read what members suggest.

Here are a couple of discussions I've come across: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/245071-32-external-drive-firewire-esata

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/174836-32-sata-transfer-rate (also a good example of how not to address others in a forum!)

Cheers - Tony
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OnTheWeb1

Contributor Location: Michigan USA Joined: Jan 02, 2009 12:58 Messages: 511 Offline

Jan 28, 2010 18:52

Well, let's say you have a gigabit LAN already set up. Next we have to do some math. A gigabit is 1000 megabits.

But, a lot of drives and drive performance ratings are in Bytes, not bits. That means we must take our 1000 megabits and divide that by 8 to get bytes. 1000/8=125MegaBytes (per second) theoretical maximum transfer rate. We'll ignore overhead and duplexing for simplicity.

So, in theory, any network device hooked up to a gigabit ethernet can transfer a maximum of 125 MegaBytes /second in one direction.

Compare that to what you are getting now. You can download the HD_Speed utilty from Steelbytes:
http://www.steelbytes.com/?mid=20&cmd=download&pid=1&lang=eng Win8 64-bit Pro Retail
Intel i7-4770
16GB DDR3 1600 8-8-8-24
MSI Z87-G45 Motherboard
ASUS GTX 660 Direct CU II OC 2GB GPU
1 TB RAID 1 (mirrored) Drive Array
Several scratch drives for video, TMP, pagefile.

James Dotson

Senior Contributor Location: Tennessee Joined: Aug 24, 2009 20:40 Messages: 3066 Offline

Jan 28, 2010 22:05

Is the NAS wired or wireless? I have two drives that are wireless. One can play high quality (not HD) videos while the other can barely play MP3's, so the NAS device itself can also make a difference. If they weren't so darn convenient I would look for a direct connection, probably eSATA. Theoretically, as I understand it, a wired LAN should be your fastest option, but I don't keep up with this stuff like I used to. __________________________________
CORNBLOSSOM

HUGH

Newbie Location: Canada Joined: Jan 26, 2010 23:41 Messages: 15 Offline

Mar 15, 2010 11:18

Guys - I've been using a 1T 7200rpm external eSata drive for backup. Very reliable, fast and small. I highly recommend it. My next toy - find a second eSata with the capability to daisy chain so I can plug the first eSata into the back of the new one. Fast easy backup so I can take a backup off site.

Toy number 2 - man I want a 250Gig Express Card 54 Solid State Drive to give me a second drive on my laptop which should mean faster rendering, correct?

Boys and their toys......

PS - I returned the HP DV7 and moved to a Dell Studio with only one 500gig drive. PowerDirector 8, PowerDVD10
Sony HDR-CX110 Full HD AVCHD
Panasonic DMC-Z3S camera (AVCHD lite - 720p)
Gateway, i3 cpu, ATI 5650 graphics, 4Gig ram, windows 7

And a Sony DV and a Cannon 8mm to boot.

JL_JL

Senior Contributor Location: Arizona, USA Joined: Oct 01, 2006 20:01 Messages: 6091 Offline

Mar 15, 2010 12:05

Good luck with the daisy chain, I'd be interested in how it works. SATA is a single controller->single device bus architecture, unlike FireWire or USB and cannot be daisy chained in the traditional sense. You can use a port multiplier which acts as a hub for multiple drives to connect to one controller, but the controller has to have hardware support for port multiplication.

Jeff

HUGH

Newbie Location: Canada Joined: Jan 26, 2010 23:41 Messages: 15 Offline

Mar 16, 2010 19:33

Bummer. I got similar feedback from a local retailer (although it was a young kid looking it up on google). I wasn't aware of a hub. Hmmm.

I'm not a technical guy so I really want to balance simplicity as well.

Based on your feedback, I'm leaning toward using my 1T eSata drive for my main backup of my laptop drive.

I have an older USB 2.0 1T drive I can free up from another computer to backup the eSata drive. I don't mind if it takes all night for this backup because it will be infrequent and I can plan it. I have experimented with backing up the eSata with the USB drive and it seems to work fine, any concerns? PowerDirector 8, PowerDVD10
Sony HDR-CX110 Full HD AVCHD
Panasonic DMC-Z3S camera (AVCHD lite - 720p)
Gateway, i3 cpu, ATI 5650 graphics, 4Gig ram, windows 7

And a Sony DV and a Cannon 8mm to boot.

HUGH

Newbie Location: Canada Joined: Jan 26, 2010 23:41 Messages: 15 Offline

Mar 16, 2010 19:38

Forgot to ask - Express 5/4 cards with solid state storage, is anyone playing around with these yet? Is this somthing that is available now or is a year or two away from being mainstream? I'm wondering what impact it would have on rendering if a person had a 128Gig SSD for the video files?

If there is already a separate post on this, I apologize. PowerDirector 8, PowerDVD10
Sony HDR-CX110 Full HD AVCHD
Panasonic DMC-Z3S camera (AVCHD lite - 720p)
Gateway, i3 cpu, ATI 5650 graphics, 4Gig ram, windows 7

And a Sony DV and a Cannon 8mm to boot.