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USB3.0 drive to eSATAp.. Is there a way?

Last response: in Storage
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I have done searches far and wide to no avail, but I think this is thread-worthy so here goes.

What have I done?.... (just background, you can skip this bit)

I have a Toshiba Satellite L500-128 laptop, got it in 09, just over 3 years old (out of warranty period) and getting dated so here is what I did:
Upgraded internal 320GB HDD to 250GB SSD Samsung 840
Upgraded CPU from core2 duo T6500 2.1ghz to P8600 2.4ghz (faster fsb, more L2, £10, no brainer)
Upgraded ATI Mobility Radeon 4570 MXM2 512MB card to ATI Mobility Radeon 4650 MXM2 1gb GDDR3 < overclockable and massive gaming perfomance boost for £50!
replaced internal optical drive for a 250GB SSD Samsung 840, the 12.7mm SATA to SATA caddy supports SATA300 speeds, as does the main drive.
Added a 12cell battery upgrade from stock 6cell, battery life when in normal use is around 5hours!

What do I want to do?....

The final step is to utilize my external HDD. I have approx 500GB internal on SSD which is fab, but I have a 1TB portable external USB3 Samsung M3 drive too and the issue is I only have USB2 capability on my laptop, but one of my ports is a hybrid eSATA + USB2 which I have been told will provide power over eSATA.
eSATA transfer speeds on this port are 3gb/s, so essentially if I can find a way to go from USB3 drive to eSATAp, I can at least get some faster read/write speeds from the device, at least thats my understanding of the theory, but I just cant find the technology to do this. Does anybody have any ideas?

I just see everything the other way round from eSATA to usb3, and the existence of that is no more unreasonable than the existence of usb3 to eSATA because in one case the drive speed and capability is the bottle neck, in the other it is the transfer rate that is the bottleneck, so both should coexist to give similar performance.

Any help would be much appreciated.



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Alabalcho said:
If you open that drive, most probably inside it lurks a SATA drive. With some poking around you might be able to split eSATA cable into power + SATA.



Thank you for the reply. That is an interesting concept of having a sata connection inside the external to a usb3. Unfortunately I was hoping for a more direct solution that doesnt involve compromising the drive as it is only a couple of weeks old. I dont want to open it up whilst its under warranty. Having read this though, I guess its quite unlikely that what I want will exist, because if it is going SATA to USB3 inside, then converting back to SATA seems pointless I guess.
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Goodeggray said:
Since your computer is from 09 no matter what you do outside the old mobo in the laptop will bottleneck it.



I understand the limitations of the system but the tradeoff to me is worth it. In case what I said initially didnt make sense, im using a USB3 external at USB2 speeds due to the mobo limitations and lack of usb3 support, but I have an eSATAp port which can and has transferred at SATA300 speeds of 3Gb/s, far faster than the 480Mbps I get from usb2. I know this because I cloned my old system from a SATA300 HDD which came with my laptop to a SATA600 SSD (Samsung 840) via the eSATAp port and at this point I did a speed test for eSATA using SiSoft Sandra to find read and write speeds of 240+, confirming my eSATA port supports that speed of data transfer.

So if I can get my existing usb3 device to transfer through eSATA port, I can get from 480mbps I have in usb2 at the mo, to upto 3gbps across the eSATA port. The existence of such technology and the increase in speed is a worthwhile investment in my opinion for someone who has an old laptop and isnt considering buying a new one. I dont have the tech to be groundbreaking, but I have the capability to do better.

Goodeggray said:
What you need is a usb3 to esata converter plug. Not sure sure such a beast exist.



That is exactly what I need, and I am hoping out of the many people on this forum, someone out there knows something about this. If we, as a planet, can land an unmanned shuttle on Mars, we can make a usb3 to esata converter, Im convinced someone has thought of this and made one somewhere.
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