OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Storage

eSata

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Per E. Johannessen:
I have a ThinkStation P520 with an eSATA port and I'm trying to find some "external SSD disk system" to connect to it.
All systems I find use either USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt. Preferably I'd like to have an external enclosure/cabinet that can hold one or two SSD's. Any ideas?

roberto:
I have eSATA on my laptop, and it works like any other hard drive. The condition is that you connect the external disk, before turning on the computer, and disconnect it when turning it off.

Per E. Johannessen:
What external disk brand/model do you have?

ivan:
I have an eSATA to SATA cable which I use to connect an SATA drive to my test computer.  That allows me to attach any size drive (largest I have used is 2TB).  The only drawback is that you need an external power supply for the drive, I am working on getting a power connector to attach to the computer to solve that problem.

Since we don't have hot swapping for drives the drive needs to be connected before the computer is switched on.

Doug Bissett:

--- Quote ---I have a ThinkStation P520 with an eSATA port and I'm trying to find some "external SSD disk system" to connect to it.
All systems I find use either USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt. Preferably I'd like to have an external enclosure/cabinet that can hold one or two SSD's. Any ideas?
--- End quote ---

I have two Nexstar enclosures, with e-Sata. One has USB 2, and the other has USB 3. I usually use USB, because e-Sata is "inconvenient" most of the time. You do need to have the device attached at boot time, or it won't be recognized. The disk that is inside can be SSD, or HDD. SSD prices have dropped, so they are now a good option (more for resistance to shock, than for speed). Performance will depend a lot on exactly what you are doing with it (the same is true for internal disks).

I would seriously question why you would want more than one physical disk in a single enclosure. If there is a hardware RAID, it may make sense (OS/2 doesn't know about RAID, so it needs to be hardware controlled, if you use it). Then again, there are better ways to do that, without spending a lot of cash.


--- Quote ---I have eSATA on my laptop, and it works like any other hard drive. The condition is that you connect the external disk, before turning on the computer, and disconnect it when turning it off.
--- End quote ---

Well, not quite. E-Sata, and Sata, are both "hot plug" technologies, You do not need to have power off to physically connect/disconnect them. You do, need to have the device attached at boot time, or the driver will never "see" it. You cannot eject the drive dynamically either. There is no way (in OS/2) to eject it (without shutting down), however, you CAN power it off, and turn it back on later, just don't try to use it while it is off, and don't try to shut down, or re-boot without turning it on again. I don't recommend doing it, but it does work (it can take a LONG time to do a CHKDSK on a 1 TB drive, when it isn't properly closed out).

In fact, there is a program that does partly eject the drive, so you can turn it off, and don't need to worry about shut down, or re-boot. I am NOT going to suggest it, because it is not very user friendly, and it would be easy to lose data, if you are not careful. It can re-mount an e-Sata disk that was mounted at boot time, but it can't mount a disk that wasn't attached at boot time.

I did some tests with the USB 3 device. Doing a copy with RSync using USB 3, and e-Sata (same device). The speed (as displayed by RSync) was almost identical.


--- Quote ---That allows me to attach any size drive (largest I have used is 2TB
--- End quote ---

The largest physical disk that OS/2 can support (currently)  is 2 TB. You can get larger disks, but OS/2 can't use them (yet). I am not even sure that you can make a larger one work, by limiting the available size to 2 TB. I do know that work is being done to fix that problem, but it is not one of the high priority projects.

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