Initially SATA was designed as an internal or inside-the-box interface technology, bringing improved performance and new features to internal PC or consumer storage. Creative designers quickly realized the innovative interface could reliably be expanded outside the PC, bringing the same performance and features to external storage needs instead of relying on USB or 1394 interfaces. Called external SATA or eSATA, customers can now utilize shielded cable lengths up to 2 meters outside the PC to take advantage of the benefits the SATA interface brings to storage. SATA is now out of the box as an external standard, with specifically defined cables, connectors, and signal requirements released as new standards in mid-2004. eSATA provides more performance than existing solutions and is hot pluggable.
- Key benefits of eSATA:Up to 6 times faster than existing external storage solutions: USB 2.0, & 1394
- Robust and user friendly external connection
- High performance, cost effective expansion storage
- Up to 2 meter shielded cables and connectors
Applications: External Direct Attached Storage for notebooks, desktop, consumer electronics and entry servers. USB and 1394 external drives are ATA drives with a bridge chip that translates from the ATA protocol To conclude, here are some actual measurements using a SATA 1.5Gbps drive and three different host bus interfaces. As you can see, there is dramatic improvement when the bus does not require a protocol overhead burden
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Banchmark Comparation 64K Read
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Banchmark Comparation 64K write
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