Customer Reviews

2 port eSATA CardBus Adapter

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have a Seagate external HDD that can accommodate USB, Firewire or eSata. I was really interested in trying the eSata interface due to the theoretical 3Gb/s transfer rate. I ran some real world tests after receiving this device and found that USB, Firewire and eSata are all about the same - 240Mb/s (30MB/s) under real world conditions. I knew that Firewire and USB 2.0 were about the same (theoretical 400Mb/s vs. 480Bb/s burst, respectively) with Firewire having the slight edge on sustained transfer. What I did not consider was that the Cardbus is the gating factor with a theoretical burst transfer rate between 33MB/s and 132MB/s depending upon the transfer type.

In summary, you will not get better transfer rates between your external device and your laptop using this device instead of USB 2.0 or Firewire.

Finally, my computer started freezing up for a few seconds at a time on the same day that I installed the drivers for this device. This may have been coincidental but I am not taking any more chances when there is no upside.

This card works perfectly with my external sata hard drive. The only thing is that the computer won't recognize it if it's just woken up from hibernation. You have to shut down and start up from scratch every time. Otherwise there have been no problems and saving large files is very quick.

I needed an eSATA Cardbus adapter to use my wifes seagate external driveon her new laptop. She uses the drive to store CAD and other large graphic design files that take forever to transfer using USB. Tried to see what I had access to locally and most of the young cybergeeks didn't know what eSATA was, so I went out on-line and found this one. It looked to be what I needed. It loaded easy, no problem with recognition or driver install, and it appears as fast or faster than the on-board hard drive. Now if I can just get the Seagate software to work as well.

Do not belive the reviews that say this is a slow card. They were using slow *DRIVES*. Any interface can only work as fast as the slowest link in the chain, which would be the hard drive in most cases. I have gotten >70MB/s with this card using an eSATA docking station, which is twice as fast as USB2. Installed easily in Windows7 without having to download the drivers manually and has not given me any trouble so far.

If you have an older computer with Cardbus, this can be a worthwhile upgrade, IMO. Most people would only use this for external eSATA, and it certainly can handle most of the fastest drives available at the moment. Mileage might vary depending on computer, but considering that most drives (except SSDs) don't get much above 100 MB/s (800 Mb/s) or so, this card is quite sufficient, even though it tops out around 1.5 Gb/s.

This card comes with unsigned drivers, neither the driver that came on the CD nor the one I downloaded from the website work satisfactorily with a Seagate Freeagent Pro on my two XP Pro machines. I have to power down completely and re-boot after hibernation or "restart" for the drive to be recognized on ESATA. Firewire and USB function as expected.
I recommend against this card.