To hell with USB! Way to go eSATA!

By now, I have been struggling long enough to run a Virtual Machine whose Virtual HDD is on external drive. I really can’t use the internal HDD (but had to) due to couple of reasons. First, storage limit as thats only 100 gigs (maximum available for laptops). Second, OS is running on internal disk and PC almost freezes at times. Third, I have to run minimum 2 virtual machines, one for Domain controller and another for SQL and TFS. It hardly works with one so forget about two.

But as the post title says it all, the bandwidth USB offers was an annoying bottleneck. Even though I managed an external HDD, it was useless. Theoretically, USB 2.0 supports 60 MB/s but the maximum speed I ever got is 12 MB/s.

There are a million people (at least) who have a lot to say (good and bad) about features in Vista. I really like few of them (but no praising now). The enhancements they did in file copying UI is one of them. First, it tells you the speed and second, it tells you the correct remaining time. This was something MS coudn’t do right since Windows 95. It takes a while to calculate the remaining time thats different story.

Now back to that USB pain. Well I guess gone are the days when I had to put virtual HDD on internal drive. Few days back I found that the SATA standard is upgraded to external SATA (eSATA). Technically it means a lot but for me, it was something which could pull me out of that USB hell. Theoretically, eSATA supports 350 MB/s. This is what I got.

I have read in some reviews that people got up to 60-70 MB/s. I have no idea whats that in my PC which is reducing it to 43. But still, its not bad at all.

What do you need to get this speed? For all of you who are frustrated with USB speed, you need an external drive which supports eSATA port. There are companies (Seagate and iOmega) who are selling these out of the box. But where Seagate is a bit costly, iOmega is only SATA and not SATA-II. Be care full when you buy stuff as SATA is half at speed compared to SATA-II. So, I bought an ICY DOCK eSATA External Enclosure and Seagate 500GB HDD. It saved me around 50 bucks.

Thats for the source of the juice but to connect it to your PC, you need one more component. You have to have an Express Card slot. Then you can get a SIIG SATA II ExpressCard. I am not sure if these controller are available for any other kind of slots. Don’t be sad if you have desktop. All you need is a spare SATA port on your motherboard. The eSATA drives and enclosures comes with an eSATA bracket.

Once you have these three components, you are all set to cruise.

Enjoy!

PS: The links in this post are for the components I selected. There are alternates available for all of them. Leave a comment if you have any question.