Replies

As I understand it, eSATA requires a different connector at the host side, and it provides slightly more voltage to span longer cables.

And, of course, it is supposed to support “hot plugging”.

Taken together, these features require a dedicated hardware controller, and a dedicated device driver.

Therefore, there may be an option to ENABLE or DISABLE that eSATA controller in your motherboard BIOS.

Look under “integrated devices” or similar description.

If your motherboard BIOS recognizes a SSN connected to your eSATA port,

and particularly if your OS sees it and you can format it and do I/O, THEN

Samsung Magician SHOULD detect it and permit firmware updates.

Last thing, you may need to update your copy of Magician to the very latest.

If none of the above works, there is always the option to install plain SATA ports in an available PCI expansion slot, and connect the internal cables directly to the integrated SATA ports on your motherboard.

Then, you can connect your SSD to another SATA cable that plugs into that PCI slot adapter at your chassis’ rear I/O panel.

You’ll also need to “hot wire” a SATA power connector.  We keep a few old AT-style PSUs around for such purposes e.g. testing fans and such.

I think it was this YT video by David Rivera:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUxVoxW6g1k&t=938s

The Best External Disk Drive Enclosures and Tools

David Rivera at YT has been doing lots of “home lab” presentations, and one of his most recent videos compared USB and eSATA performance with external enclosures.

If my memory is correct, the USB performance was significantly lower than the eSATA performance, when the external enclosure housed a SSD.

The combined controller overheads with USB really slowed the performance of that external SSD.

The HDD’s measured speed was almost the same with USB and eSATA cables.

eSATA can be very practical, provided that it does support hot-swapping eSATA cables;  or, at a minimum, with cables attached the OS detects the external drive when its AC adapter is switched ON.

https://www.youtube.com/user/davidrrivera1

 

Ben, I believe another relevant factor is the quality of the input power a motherboard uses while it is running.

In the sequence of the “flow” there’s the electrical utility, a UPS next in line, then the PSU.

My empirical research appears to support the conclusion that a quality motherboard is the component that is LEAST LIKELY to fail, as long as all 3 “nodes” in that sequence produce quality DC power to the motherboard.

Fan bearings wear our;  HDD spindle and armature bearings wear out;  anything with moving parts is prone to wear out at some point in time.

Theory to test:

does a motherboard running 24/7 with quality input power

function predictably longer than

the same motherboard switched ON and OFF

but with poor quality input power while ON?

 

 

There is another, not-so-obvious benefit that obtains by switching a PC OFF:

as long as the NIC settings DISABLE all “Wake On X” options e.g.
“Wake on LAN”, “Wake on Magic Packet” etc.,
a database hosted by a PC that is switched OFF cannot be hacked.

As such, an older XP or Win7 PC that has been re-purposed to a dedicated storage server, should continue to operate for a very long time EVEN IF one of its HDDs should fail or exceed its factory warranty.

The philosophy we have implemented is the ability to restore an entire database

EVEN IF a HDD fails completely:

that entire database is proliferated across all other physical drives installed inside any one chassis or external enclosure.

Thus, “Copy Partition” in Partition Wizard restores the missing partition(s) reliably and automatically to the new replacement drive(s).

Susan,
WHATEVER takes your time away from your superb insights about Windows Updates, should be reviewed ASAP for effective streamlining and/or immediate delegation perhaps to some intern.
Consider a “squeaky wheel” philosophy:
only squeaking wheels get immediate oiling.
For myself, I would prefer the ability to refer to the latest REPLY(s) by “HackerMaster” and/or any other chosen pseudonym RATHER THAN to multiple “anony-muses”.
my 2 cents

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wavy, Will Fastie

Re: XCOPY over a LAN on NTFS file systems

This simple technique may be very useful to PC Users
who need a simple alternative to complex backup programs.

You can reproduce this sequence in a few minutes of your time:

Create a top-level folder in Command Prompt:

cd \
md toppy

Now, create a sub-folder:

cd toppy
md subby

Assume drive letter N: is a Windows Network drive.

Then:

xcopy subby N:\toppy\subby /s/e/v/d
-or-
xcopy subby N:\toppy\subby /s/e/v/d/l

The latter will display a list of files that would be copied
if the “/l” option had NOT been invoked.

This same XCOPY command also works no matter how deep other “subbies”
may be in the file system “tree”.

We simplified the above with GET.bat and PUT.bat commands
which reside in C:\Windows\System32 .

Only limitation is that “toppy” cannot have any imbedded blanks.
(There may be a way around that limitation, with further coding,
but I never got a “round tuit”.)

“What’s a ’round tuit’?” asked the church mouse.
“That the opposite of a ‘square tuit‘,” replied the Choir Master.

I can share a (now) funny experience which I had
at a popular PC hardware website, many years ago.

In one of their User Forum topics, I had simply
posted a straightforward and honest question:

“Is ‘VISTA’ an acronym for Virtual Instant Surveillance Tactical Application?”

The moderators IMMEDIATELY banned me FOR LIFE.

So, I re-registered using a pen name and
eventually was awarded BEST SOLUTION 33 times!

(I archived those 33 BEST SOLUTIONS at our website,
if anyone is interested: FYI lots of those SOLUTIONS
are now obsolete, however e.g. optimizing spinning HDD.)

2 users thanked author for this post.

wavy, Cybertooth

Ben, You are the Mark of Experience!

FYI: because I abhor the thought of dumping a working motherboard in a landfill,
we have re-purposed older XP PCs as backup-storage servers.

(This, incidentally, also allows for a long-term longitudinal test of older motherboards. To date, ASUS wins, hands down!)

Windows XCOPY command works GREAT over a LAN.

Even though the integrated SATA ports may run at 3G or 1.5G,
one option is to install a USB 3.0 add-in card. Then,
we have had a lot of success with StarTech’s external USB/eSATA enclosure.

That StarTech comes with both cables and its own AC adapter
which can be switched ON and OFF separately from the host PC.

It front-loads without the need for any tools.

And, many published measurements confirm that USB 3.0’s 5G clock
is more than enough bandwidth to support all modern rotating HDDs.

And, even if a USB add-in card works in an x1 PCIe 1.0 slot,
the upstream bandwidth is still 2.5G / 10 = 250 MB/second.

Our favorite HDD for that StarTech enclosure is the Western Digital
2TB “Black” edition 3.5″ HDD. The retail prices of that HDD have fallen
a lot in recent months, and it continues to be a superb performer
for our backup purposes.

Lastly, we only switch that StarTech external enclosure ON
to do routine backups, then we switch it OFF.

The theory behind this schedule is that HDDs wear most from
total POWER ON time, total NUMBER OF POWER cycles and
of course total READ/WRITE activity.

Applying that theory, our StarTech external enclosures minimize
all 3 sources of wear — hopefully prolonging the useful life
of its HDD beyond the factory warranty.

Lastly, because that StarTech is easily detached,
it’s also a piece o’ cake to re-attach it to another PC
via available USB ports. Similarly, the EZ front-loading
permits rapid replacement of the HDD inside it.

Who first said “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”?

On some of our older chassis, we added cooling fans to the left-side panel,
using a template and a metal jigsaw.

It’s really a piece o’ cake to add a dust filter to such add-on fans.

Whenever those dust filters need cleaning, it really is very EZ
to switch on the shop vac and quickly remove all accumulated dust.

The main advantage of such filters is that there is no need
to do any disassembly whatsoever.

Also, this works whether or not the PC is powered ON.

The latest HP Z240 tower workstations we have purchased “refurbished”
have room behind the front bezel for an optional dust filter; and,
the BIOS has a feature that enables a scheduled REMINDER to clean that filter.

We do almost exactly the same thing with a DeWalt shop vac:
the hose connects at 2 points: at exhaust AND at intake.
By switching the hose to the exhaust port,
that DeWalt blows a strong stream of clean air.
The attachments also enable a stronger flow
thru a smaller opening in the tip of the attachment.

RIIIIGHT! Saves $$$ otherwise spent on cans of compressed air.

Yes, this should also work:

> “any visitor who is not logged in must enter their name and email address before they can post or reply in the forums.”

Good changes, Susan:

Can you add a feature that directs a Forum User to LOGIN first
if that User has attempted an anonymous post?

I recall a few times when I have replied withOUT doing a LOGIN first,
and that was ONLY because I found a particular article or reply
to be interesting enough to distract me from doing a LOGIN.

Put simply, I forgot to LOGIN.

A courteous reminder from your Forum software should solve that.

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Will Fastie, Cybertooth

To cross-check my assumptions, I found this video at Highpoint’s website:

https://filedn.com/lG3WBCwKGHT7yNuTsFCwXy0/HighPoint-Download/Video/SSD/7505/SSD7505_Win10Pro_980PRO.mp4

4 x Samsung 980 Pro 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD in RAID-0

23,673 MB/second MEASURED compares very closely to:
23,394 MB/second PROJECTED above i.e. PCIe 3.0 MEASURED x 2

The latter numbers mean that aggregate controller overhead hasn’t changed from PCIe 3.0 to PCIe 4.0; and, that Samsung’s in-house Nand Flash is still not the limiting factor.

WAIT FOR IT! 2 x “4×4” add-in cards produced
40,367 MB/second MEASURED in “Cross-Sync” RAID-0 mode!

The latter number equates to 40,367 / 8 = DDR5-5045

Here’s a first-order approximation that shows
how a PCIe 4.0 “4×4” add-in card can perform
better than some Optane DIMMs @ DDR4-2666:

Start with the measured READ speed reported above: 11,697 MB/second

The latter is an empirical measurement that reflects controller overheads.

Double that by upgrading to PCIe 4.0: 11,697 x 2 ~= 23,394 MB/second

The latter may not be realistic as long as the raw speeds of Nand Flash
components are the limiting factor.

Scale that for comparison to DDR4: 23,394 / 8 bytes per cycle ~= DDR4-2924

The Optane DIMMs discussed above were rated at DDR4-2666.

Therefore, an OS can be freshly installed to a PCIe 4.0 4×4 add-in card without compromising the rated speed of the main memory subsystem.

Even if a triple-channel architecture were to assign Channel 3
to Optane DIMMs, and
even if an OS were installed onto those Optane DIMMs,
the overall performance of a PCIe 4.0 4×4 add-in card is expected
to be nearly the same — withOUT all the extra work required
to customize that triple-channel architecture.

And, of course, a 4×4 add-in card uses non-volatile memory,
so there is no need to worry about the loss of data
that occurs when DRAM is powered OFF.