Author Topic: eSata  (Read 28329 times)

Doug Bissett

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Re: eSata
« Reply #30 on: March 26, 2021, 01:56:21 am »
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We are discussing an external drive case that used to have eSATA and USB3 sockets but which now only has USB3 socket - so there is no longer an option to use it as eSATA drive, it is now USB only.

I assume you mean an updated version of a drive enclosure, not one that magically removed it's existing eSATA connector  ???. You can still get eSATA enclosures (also with USB 3), but you need to watch what you order. Most vendors list the version with only USB first, because the eSATA costs more, and not many people even know what eSATA is.

eSATA has definitely NOT gone away, although USB 3 is giving it a good run for the money. If they ever get the quality of USB devices under control (apparently not even considered, in most cases), USB may end up replacing eSATA. Currently, I see no evidence that the companies who care about quality, are abandoning eSATA.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: eSata
« Reply #31 on: March 26, 2021, 04:25:21 pm »
I assume you mean an updated version of a drive enclosure, not one that magically removed it's existing eSATA connector  ???.

Hi Doug.
Let's remember that we have people from all around the world on this forum, and sometime how we express the ideas may not  clear, and sometimes even for a native english speaker some mistakes may occur in text communication. I try my best with my written english here.

About eSATA, as a external device port, my opinion is that is loosing on the market (or maybe already lost). For what I see newer ICY BOX enclosures now has USB 3.1 or Thunderbolt. And when you ask the common people, they possible know what the USB port is, but not about eSATA.  But as part of the OS/2 community, eSATA may be working better than USB 3, today. So, I understand why we should defend that kind of port until the USB 3 driver evolve and provide better functionality for external disk drives. But the good thing seems to be that SATA is not going away yet, and eSATA is just the external port implementation.  (Maybe tomorrow NVMe will kick me in the face)

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Currently, I see no evidence that the companies who care about quality, are abandoning eSATA.
Maybe for SATA enclosures you don't see that. But what about the newer things with the M.2 ports? I see a mix of products between that only support USB 3, while some other came with USB 3 and eSATA. Maybe at the end the market will prefer USB 3 and manufacturer will found the eSATA port (for this enclosures) irrelevant.

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Martin Iturbide
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Doug Bissett

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Re: eSata
« Reply #32 on: March 27, 2021, 04:07:35 am »
eSATA has never been completely supported by any OS. that I know about. Even windows will usually refuse to eject it, until the system is shut down. For those who understand it, eSATA is a far better technology than USB, but lack of proper support makes it difficult to use.

NVME is a storage technology, related to SATA  (or eSATA, which is really just SATA with a different connector), or IDE. M2 and NVME are just other interfaces to storage technology. Which one will win the race, is yet to be seen.

In years past, there was the "winprinter' controversy. Today, "winprinter" is all that is available, because people didn't understand the difference (other than price). Pay double for a computer powerful enough to do the job, and save a little on the printer. This is really no different.

Manufacturers are going to choose the cheapest alternative, and they usually don't care if that alternative even works properly (and many of the new technologies don't work all that well). The only thing that will stop that nonsense is if users refuse to buy inferior technology. Most users have no idea what technology their computers use, so it isn't going to happen.

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About eSATA, as a external device port, my opinion is that is loosing on the market (or maybe already lost).

No, it is not, yet, lost. You just need to watch for the option when you buy something that can use it. You do not need a specific eSATA port, it will connect to normal SATA ports, if you have an adapter (just a cable), or even just a cable with the appropriate ends on it. The killer, as mentioned above, is lack of support for mount/dismount, and that is not unique to OS/2 (and the cost, of course).

USB 3 is definitely going to take a chunk out of the market, because speed is no longer a serious difference. If they ever get USB quality under control, it may be the end of eSATA. I don't see that happening any time soon, but if the market goes away, so will the devices.

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But as part of the OS/2 community, eSATA may be working better than USB 3, today.

Not from what I see. I have two eSATA devices. One has a USB 2 connector, which is definitely slower than eSATA. The other has USB 3. Running the exact same job runs so close to the same speed, that I can't tell which is faster. USB is somewhat easier to use, because of the mount/dismount requirements for eSATA. Which is better depends on exactly what you are doing with the device.

Having said all of that, yes USB does have some problems, that are being addressed. The biggest problem is that USB is often very poor quality devices, and that makes it very difficult to make every one of them work well, with any OS.

The race is still on. It is up to the consumer to determine which technology wins. Meanwhile, we need more drivers to make some of the new things work with OS/2. I know that NVME is almost ready. Nobody is working on making eSATA mount/dismount work, although there is a half way solution, if you want to mess around with it (not worth the effort, from what I see).

Greg Pringle

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Re: eSata
« Reply #33 on: March 27, 2021, 12:45:42 pm »
M.2 is NMVE and so is U.2 I have been installing U.2 servers and I can say that SATA does not hold a candle to it. A 1 gig U.2 is around $350 but comes in enterprise class and is hot swapable. The one issue is how to raid these devices. Not really possible at the moment. But is it needed? I have some enterprise SATA drives online for over 14 years that are used heavily for small files 7 days a week without a single failure. The other downside is the only way to use the U.2 at present is with a rack server which has the correct backplane. I currently use linux (suse 15) for this. I have a number of instances of a java based database I wrote running on various platforms. (Win, OS/2, LInux, AS/400) I had reached a bottleneck with SATA drives with very heavy use. Now with U.2 the applications look like there is no load on them. I am eager to see NVME on OS/2.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2021, 12:56:08 pm by Greg Pringle »

Andi B.

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Re: eSata
« Reply #34 on: March 27, 2021, 05:15:30 pm »
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eSATA has never been completely supported by any OS. that I know about. Even windows will usually refuse to eject it, until the system is shut down. For those who understand it, eSATA is a far better technology than USB, but lack of proper support makes it difficult to use.
That's not true. I told you this in another thread before. Maybe on YOUR Win system you can not eject. Or maybe YOUR antivirus program do not allow to eject. Or any other thing on YOUR system inhibits eject. But this is not a Win problem per see. The Win system I tested can eject eSATA drives without problems (not from the popup menu of the drive but from the icon in the lower right corner).

I don't know if different *nix systems have problems with eSATA like our platform have. I'm pretty sure they don't. Maybe some *nix user can comment on this.

Repeating false myths about other OSes doesn't help us. It's our OS which have problems with attach and eject eSATA drives during operation. Not a common problem with other OSes and not a general problem with eSATA.

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The other has USB 3. Running the exact same job runs so close to the same speed, that I can't tell which is faster.
For the system I tested this is only true when I boot Win7. Running the same system with OS/2/ArcaOS the difference between USB3 (Intel and Renesas chips) and (e)SATA harddisks is significant. Maybe with 'slow' disks our slow USB(3) throughput (OS/2/ArcaOS) does not show up. But with my disks and both tested, internal Intel USB3 chip set and PCIe card with Renesas chip, the difference is huge.

Dave Yeo

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Re: eSata
« Reply #35 on: March 27, 2021, 06:01:29 pm »
Judging by how easy it is to unmount a file system on Linux, I can't imagine a problem unmounting a eSATA drive.