PCMCIA ESATA

Joshalot wrote on 8/18/2009, 5:21 PM

Anyone have any experience with PCMCIA ESATA cards? My laptop does not have esata port and I use external drives. I am assuming that esata will be faster than USB2? Anyone know how the perf is through PCMCIA?

Comments

Coursedesign wrote on 8/18/2009, 6:01 PM

ESATA rocks. It is faster than either USB2 or Firewire.

For years, I've been using an ExpressCard/34 version from FirmTek, a company I can highly recommend with great products that reviews have indicated to be more reliable than many other brands.

chiltern wrote on 8/18/2009, 6:40 PM

E-SATA over Expresscard (pluggable PCI-Express) would be faster, but E-SATA using the older PCMCIA ("PC-Card") will be slower than using Expresscard... In any case, USB2 tends to be slower than its 'advertised' maximum throughput...

rmack350 wrote on 8/18/2009, 9:50 PM

I've used SCSI over PCMCIA and it was okay. It ought to be about the same as using a SATA controller in a PCI slot.

John_Cline wrote on 8/18/2009, 9:55 PM

PC-Card (PCMCIA) and PCI both have a maximum transfer rate of about 133 MB/sec. This is just slightly faster than the fastest single SATA drive. You should be fine. It will be significantly faster that USB-2 or Firewire.