Vantec NexStar 3 NST-360UF

It’s my turn to do a head-to-head review in this column, but I’m going to go out on a limb and do something a little different. Rather than comparing products, I’m going to compare some technologies.

Many of you are thinking about buying an external hard drive for backups. The most common type on the store shelves uses USB 2.0 to connect to your computer. You can buy one of these, connect it to nearly any computer, and get so-so speeds. A FireWire drive will give you roughly similar performance, but at a higher price and less compatibility.

On the other hand, if your computer supports eSATA (external Serial Advanced Technology Attachment), you can make your backups go a lot faster with a compatible external hard drive. eSATA basically extends your computer’s internal SATA ports outside your computer. It uses a stronger type of data cable connector, however, so an eSATA plug is shaped differently than a SATA plug.

I knew from personal experience that eSATA is fast, but I’d never pinned down exactly how fast it was in comparison to internal, USB, and FireWire drives. I set out to test a drive using each of these interfaces and benchmarking software to prove which one is the victor. (There are also drives that attach to a network router via Ethernet, but they’re hardly the plug-and-play options most users want.)

Vantec graciously loaned me a couple of excellent external hard drive enclosure kits. Add your own 3.5-inch hard drive to one of these enclosures, and you’ll have an external drive ready for backups or extra storage space. One kit, the NexStar 3 NST-360SU, turns a SATA drive into an eSATA and USB 2.0 unit. The NexStar 3 NST-360UF accepts a common IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) hard drive and supports USB 2.0 and FireWire.

And there was the rub. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use the same drive for all my tests because the eSATA enclosure required a SATA drive and the FireWire kit needed an IDE drive. To get around this, I located two 80GB Maxtor hard drives that were identical except for their interfaces, SATA and IDE (the 6Y080M0 and 6Y080P0).

As you can see from my test results in the chart, eSATA is undeniably the fastest external option. With a substantial performance lead over USB or FireWire, eSATA can significantly speed up your backups. In fact, eSATA is so fast that you won’t be able to tell whether you’re accessing an internal or external drive.

There’s more good news: Even if your computer doesn’t have an eSATA port, you may not need to buy a $25 adapter card to add one. The Vantec NST-360SU comes with a simple bracket that installs in an empty expansion card slot and connects to one of your motherboard’s SATA plugs. I found similar brackets from Sabrent (www.sabrent.com), Rosewill (www.rosewill.com), and others online for $5.99 and up.

USB will be with us for a long, long time. As a hard drive connection, though, its days are numbered. Long live eSATA!

Send your comments and eSATA fan fiction to marty@smartcomputing.com

SATA (Serial ATA) hard drive IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) hard drive eSATA USB 2.0 SATA Internal FireWire USB 2.0 ATA/133 Internal HD Tach RW 3.0.1.0 Read rates, avg/max 48.3/60 31.2/32.5 48.6/60 36.9/39 32/32.5 46.7/60 Write rates, avg/max 43/54 31.4/32 48.6/60 26.8/28 31.2/32.5 43.4/54 PCMark05 1.2.0 Virus Scan 72.9 26.9 74.8 32 28 75.4 File Write 59.5 30.3 59.2 25.7 30.7 58.3

All figures in MBps (megabytes per second).

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