Sans Digital MSTUT external eSATA enclosure - Whats better?

[fishquail]

Is eSATA as fast as SATA?

Im looking at buying 2 western digital SE16 500gb SATA II drives for use in an external eSATA enclosure for video editing. The enclosure im looking at is
the Sans Digital MS2UT. Here is link:
http://www.sansdigital.com/MS2UT.htm

I want the best possible performace for HD editing. Im concerned because im not sure im buying the fastest possible sollution for external large fast storage... Is there a better external enclosure that is eSATA at SATA-II speed?
This one seems to be only SATA 150mbs speed.

Im confused. Too many choices. Someone tell me what to do.

 

[nobly]

Note that if you plan to exceed SATA 1 speeds (150MB/s), you would need at least 3 HDD's in RAID 0.

eSATA is included in the SATA 2 specification, but can run at 1.5Gbps or 3.0Gbps. I guess this enclosure is rated at SATA 1 speeds.
http://www.sata-io.org/esata.asp

At 300MB/s, you would need about 4 raptors or equivalent to 5 regular HDD's in RAID 0 to exceed that bandwidth.

eSATA is the best consumer solution right now for external HDDs. Its faster than firewire and USB 2.0 in theoretical (and most likely practical applications - especially in RAID).

Since you just have 2 SATA drives, you can get by w/ this enclosure.
I'd encourage you to look around for reviews and compare them to comparable firewire external HDD solutions. (Tom's has some).
The specification calls for the above parameters, but there's nothing like a real-world situation to tell how well they implemented the specification.

 

[fishquail]

I know that eSATA is better than firewire, or USB2.0.

But is eSATA perfomrace going to be the same as SATA via motherobord conection?

And I cant get a definitive answher as to this question. I am thinking that eSATA slows down the speed a bit. I think Im going to avoid any external enclosure. I need as much performance as i can get. Im editing HD.

 

[nobly]

Yeah, it should be the same.
Why wouldn't it be? It hooks into the same controller as the internal SATA ports.

If you don't need to have the drives portable, then just go internal. Or if its just in your house, share across the network.

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.

The results of eSATA are dramatic and with no protocol overhead issues as with USB or 1394.

The typical cable length is 2 meters (6 feet); long enough to reach from a floor mounted PC to a drive placed on the desktop. The compliance is defined in the SATA II: Electrical Specification, as the Gen1m and Gen2m specifications for 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s respectively.

Simple DAS with eSATA host cable and port multipler with several SATA 1.5Gbps drives. This configuration is capable of up to 300MBps.

http://www.sata-io.org/esata.asp