Archive for the 'SATA' Category

A feature in Toshiba laptops allows you to charge your USB devices from USB ports even when your PC is asleep.  I thought this was pretty cool because with standard PCs, your laptop has to be on to charge your devices, on the Toshiba, your laptop can be off.

http://laptops.toshiba.com/research-center/technology-guides/esata-usb-port

I assume that you can draw down your laptop battery or be charging from the wall your laptop and allyour other devices, even when the laptop is off.   You probably know your PC has to be on for the USB to provide power normally.  This is such a simple idea, and I think it’s great.  I love this kind of Innovative thinking.

You will also see a mixed eSATA and USB port. I can’t tell how this works, but it looks like you both Physical connectors are in the same socket, but eSATA is flipped over so the 2 electrical PHYs fit in the same socket differently. So it’s really just 2 connectors in one.  Certainly if you are investing in eSATA it will work great.  You can get USB 3.0 now as an add-in card and use all your existing USB and new USB 3.0 products with that add-in card so you will have 2 options.

No matter what, this Toshiba laptop feature is pretty cool and will help reduce the number of adapters you need to bring on business trips.

(I stole this idea for a blog entry from a coworker).

I realized I forgot the the best possible USB 3.0 product.

5) Combined USB 3.0 Host and USB 3.0 Flash Express Card.

This is the ExpressCard that has both a USB 3.0 Host and a USB 3.0 Flash Drive embedded in it.

Basically, the USB 3.0 Flash Drive adds storage, it has 100GB or more of storage space for your data, pictures, music video as a backup or extra storage for your Netbook.

This means it uses the ExpressCard USB 3.0 connector inside the PC and looks like an attached USB 3.0 Peripheral to the notebook/netbook PC.

Also, the product will have a USB 3.0 Host in it.  This uses the ExpressCard PCI-e connector on the ExpressCard, and provides 1 or 2 or more additional USB ports with the full 4 Gbits/sec adding more throughput from these ports into the laptop.  This Host looks like an attached USB 3.0 Host on the PCI-e bus.

For a 6th USB 3.0 product would add an additional external USB 3.0 Device A-Plug to the product above.

When you remove the product above, you use the USB 3.0 Device A-Plug that could be plugged into any standard PC USB  Host port.  The disadvantage, is that you probably end up with a Plug that sticks out somewhere on this card that can get bumped or broken, unless there is a way to fold it up.

I’m offering my fellow PMMs some space to write on my blog because:

1) They occasionally have insightful things to say
2) Turns out I’m not as insightful as I thought

Mick Posner is the SATA Chauvinist Pig.

I have a modicum of respect for his thoughts. (He causes havoc if I don’t listen to him.)

Here’s Mick’s thoughts:

“USB 3.0 – Is it fast enough?

We all know that USB 3.0 is just around the corner and it’s going to bring many advantages, but is it’s goal of 10x performance over USB 2.0, or 320 MB/sec, too little? In this digital age with audio and video media the read and write performance from disk to player or disk to disk is the main bottleneck. Let’s face it, USB 2.0 is not up to the task, just last week I was forced to reset my 80 GB portable media player and it took well over 2 hours to reload all of the video files. Looking at the theoretical speeds of USB 2.0 it should not have taken that long, in theory it should have taken about 45 minutes, but it took over 2 hours. The USB 3.0 goal of 320 MB/sec is very close to what SATA and eSATA 3 Gb/sec runs today. Again if we use the theoretical this sort of performance means that I could have loaded my player in around 9 minutes which actually is not that bad, but is it enough? Maybe we should just skip USB 3.0 and transition to eSATA as it’s already proven at 300 MB/sec. That’s what the SATA-IO organization body wants you to do; they have just announced the power over eSATA imitative (http://www.sata-io.org/newsandevents.asp) which will result in a new eSATA cable and connectors which carry 3 times the power than USB 2.0 but at SATA 3 Gb/sec speeds. With this enhancement eSATA will no longer be restricted to mass storage devices with external power adapters, eSATA maybe able to break into the peripheral space. With SATA 6 Gb/sec just around the corner maybe SATA is the right direction to take. Then again maybe 9 minutes to load 80 GB is fast enough………but I want it now…”

Note from Eric:

SATA/eSATA are a ways away. By then we will be talking about 2 TB drives, maybe 4 TB drives. Imagine 1/2 TB Media Players.
- Will SATA be fast enough?
- Will manufacturers put both USB 3.0 and eSATA on the outside of their devices?

I agree with Mick on one point. I had to wipe my Media Player just a few weeks ago to clear off 18 GB of “unknown” material. It took for freaking ever. Apparently I can’t get along without my Media Player for even a few minutes. Maybe I should pay attention to my kids or something. I’ll ask Mick…

Tags: USB 3.0 SATA eSATA