Vantec is back once again with an all new and innovative product for your external storage needs. Most of us have experience the awesome speeds of internal Serial ATA hard drives, now we can achieve those same speeds with our external storage! Vantec has just introduced their eSATA interface card lineup that could very well be the high speed and inexpensive external storage solution we've all been looking for. Today we'll be looking at Vantec's PCI, PCIE and PCMCIA eSATA interface cards. Although eSATA enclosures and hard drives are not as readily available yet as we all may wish, we did get a drive from Seagate to use for testing. Let's get started and see what Vantec has done for us storage freaks!

What is eSATA?

     If you were confused like I was about the actual differences between eSATA and SATA this should help you out. First you can NOT plug a SATA drive directly into an eSATA port. With a little help from the eSATA White Paper, we can take a look at what eSATA is all about.

     If you notice from the picture taken from the eSATA white paper, the slot is of a different configuration. Also eSATA requires their devices to be externally powered, which means all devices have a separate power adapter.

     Some other changes:

• The external cable connector is a shielded version of the connector specified in SATA 1.0a with these basic differences:

• The External connector has no “L” shaped key, and the guide features are vertically offset and reduced in size. This prevents the use of unshielded internal cables in external applications.

• To prevent ESD damage, the insertion depth is increased from 5mm to 6.6mm and the contacts are mounted further back in both the receptacle and plug.

• To provide EMI protection and meet FCC and CE emission requirements, the cable has an extra layer of shielding, and the connectors have metal contact points.

• There are springs as retention features built into the connector shield on both the top and bottom surfaces.

• The external connector and cable are designed for over five thousand insertions and removals while the internal connector is only specified to withstand fifty.

• The results of eSATA are dramatic and with no protocol overhead issues as with USB or 1394. The eSATA storage bus delivers as much as 37 times more performance.  This ability is perfect for using an array of drives with performance striping behind the eSATA host port.

     What this should mean is we will be getting a big increase in the speed of our SATA devices, this has not gotten as far as it can yet, and the speeds listed on the box are possible speeds. Dependant on the drive you are hooking up to it. And having a perfect world scenario. But these devices are performing well as we will see.

The PCI Solution:

     Vantec has all of your SATA needs covered with this card. Pretty much every computer on the market today has a PCI slot, so this card could be your best bet if you're not exactly sure what you need. This bad boy not only delivers eSATA, but it also has an internal SATA port as well. The Vantec PCI eSATA card is an inexpensive and easy way to get started.

Specifications:

• Interface: 32-bit 33/66 MHz PCI v2.2

• Connections: 1x Internal SATA port 1x External SATA (eSATA) port

• Dimension: 120mm x 50mm x 13mm (Not including mounting plate)

• Pentium or equivalant PC with one available PCI slot

• Windows 98SE/NT4.0/ME/2000/XP

Test System:

Test Drives:

• 250GB Hitachi Deskstar, 7200RPM, 8MB Cache, Hard Drive

• Seagate eSATA 500 GB External Hard Drive

Out of Box Experience:

This device is easy to install using Windows, just insert the disk and let Windows find the drivers Automatically.

Testing:

     For testing we used HD Tach 3.0.1.0 which is available in a freeware version here. First we tested using the Motherboard controller and the Hitachi. All tests were performed using the Quick Test which uses 8mb zones.

Then we plugged in the Vantec to test the same drive.

     I would say that it looks impressive, it did actually increase the burst speed over the ABIT onboard SATA by 6 MB a second. But on closer look random access went up .1 MB/s and average read did the same, up by .1 MB/s, the fact that an add-on card got the better of onboard is a good thing. Next we tested the external eSATA Seagate drive.

     It looks like the eSATA did not fair quite as well as the internal. Burst speed was down by 18 MB/s, CPU utilization took an increase of 4% (plus or minus 2%). But the average read only took a 1.2 MB\s.