Are you interested to find out that who wins the race between eSATA and USB? This article provides the pros and cons of both these technologies.
Though we all have extensively used the universal serial bus (USB) and Firewire, a lot of people ask about the lesser used eSATA technology, and how it would fare in the eSATA vs. USB vs. Firewire comparison. ESATA stands for External Serial Advanced Technology Attachment. It is an interface for external devices that work on the eSATA platform. This technology is said to have its advantages over the traditional USB 2.0 port, and even over FireWire. When this technology came out, it boasted a better and more advanced features than the erstwhile popular USB 2.0, but early signs indicate that, with the release of technologically advanced USB 3.0, the eSATA will probably not be able to match up against it.
Comparing eSATA and USB 2.0
Transfer Rates
The assumption is that for one technology to be adjudged superior than the other in this criterion, the file copy speed from either drive to computer or vice versa, should be higher. The eSATA transfer rates are quite higher, and the upper limit can be as high as 3 Gb/sec, which is spectacular when compared to the transfer rates of USB based hard drives, which are around the 480 Mb/sec mark.
PCMark05 Score
Widely considered to be an excellent benchmark for measuring overall computer performance, the ongoing debate can be solved by the PCMark05 rating. It rates the normal USB 2.0 external hard drive with a score of 3578, and the eSATA device with a score of 5342.2.
Common Usability
In this criterion, eSATA loses out to the USB, as the latter is commonly seen in most computers as compared to the former one. For computers that don’t have an existing eSATA port, purchasing a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) is necessary to use devices that are based on this technology. But, in this criterion, the USB port is more popular.
Thus, we can firmly conclude that with the exception of common usability, the eSATA data storage device wins this debate. If you were to compare eSATA 3G vs. USB 3.0 that are newly emerged technologies, the USB would win as its file copy speeds are remarkably higher. The former one is a third revison or generation of the SATA technology, and it was released in 2009. Its data transfer speeds are about 6 Gb/sec.
It is expected that the later versions of this technology that would come out in the future, would consist of a faster speed greater than the current one. The USB 3.0 technology was released in 2008, and it provides a data transfer speed of about 5 Gb/sec.