I'm about to buy a 1Tb SataIII hard drive which will replace my existing 500Gb SataII which will then become an external backup hard drive within an enclosure. My question is, should I get an eSata or USB3 enclosure? These are the two I am looking at: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/icy-...5-sata-3gb-s-hdd-to-usb-30-external-enclosure http://www.scan.co.uk/products/icy-...o-usb-20-and-esata-host-inc-75cm-blue-led-fan
Get an aftermarket enclosure with both. They are not that hard to find, so you can use whichever interface is most advantageous.
+1 to USB3, eSata is a dying interface and isn't as smooth to use as USB, coupled with the fact that the bacward compatibility makes it usable on many more computers. Sent from my HTC Desire S using Tapatalk 2
eSata is still technically better, though I do concede, that most fail to adopt Pesata which is what is 100% necessary to be a convenient interface and why it has been a relative failure. Having to plug in 2 cables is just retarded and a nuisance. If manufacturers would get smart and implement PeSata across, imagine the future of 6gbps esata portable ssd... usb3 can't match it.
Ummmm... Has anyone else actually looked up the MSI790GX-G65 board the OP has? Simply that, according to the manufacturer's website the board only has USB2. So, without the OP buying a 3rd party usb3 pcie card, they would get far shonkier results by buying a usb enclosure of any ilk to connect to a USB2 controller than a 3Gb/s eSATA one... Oh, & whilst a HDD might 'claim' to be 6Gb/s, this is utter rubbish... ...even the 15K enterprise ones don't reach 3Gb/s... ...& personal experience is that, for large sequential transfers (as that's my usage - & copying the same files to identical drives with the same data on... ...i use a USB3 dock for backing up my DASes), eSATA is much quicker than USB3.
Get one with both, you can use it on machines with USB 2.0 or eSata or USB 3.0 or what have you. It's the best possible option. eSata allows you to run at full Sata speeds.
I've recently upgraded to Sandy Bridge i5 and Asus Z68 but haven't changed my rig spec in my posts. Sorry. I should have thought of that.
No worries... ...just had seemed odd that people were recommending usb3 when you didn't appear to have it. (it's normally worth double checking the rig in the sig before recommending anything) in that case, whilst i've found 3Gb/s eSATA to be faster than usb3 for larger transfers to a single HDD, unless you're doing anything that's uber-speed critical then the difference isn't huge... ...the big advantage of going for a usb3 dock is that it tends to be easier to pull one HDD & plug in another - not necessary now, but if you want to add more backup drives into the future... ...or pull data off of other drives... ...or...
usb3 devices are backwards compatible with usb, not every machine has esata, but all machines from the last 5 years or so have usb of some description
USB is a better choice... for 2.5" drives. For 3.5" drives the choice is not so simple. Here is why : eSATA doesn't have any way of powering the target device. So you need to use external power adapter or use another USB connection to the computer. The issue is that USB2 gives you only 0.5A, which is fine for SSD or 2.5" drives, but nowhere near enough for pretty much any 3.5" drive. To solve the need for extra USB2 cable for 2.5" drives, some companies have eSATAp instead of eSATA - it is pretty much a eSATA+USB2 combined in one connector. Same limitations apply as above, plus there is a smaller range of boards which support it. USB3 is more common and backwards compatible with USB2 if needed. For 2.5" drives it is again a good option, but for 3.5" drives you are again back to power adapter or dual USB3 cable, because USB3 gives you only 0.9A. For 99% of use cases, the difference between eSATA and USB3 will be minimal - i have a X25-M G1 in my USB3 box and it gives me ~180MB/s reads, same as with a SATA2 connection. My recommendation: USB3. It gives you a option to use it through USB2 if needed, and you will have to use the power adapter anyway with both USB3 and eSATA for the 3.5" drives.
