Flush USB 3.0 Expresscard Adapter

[83bj60]

Hi 83bj60 I'm glad this info was useful for you. I should do a follow up to be fair to the AKE card. [...]
Nice! So I uninstalled the old drivers and installed the new ones last night. I also brought the card and my Iomega Ego 1TB (yes it's this one) drive with me to work to run a test on it. I'm using my work ASUS G50V as the test bed in this case. [...]
I used CrystalDiskMark to test the Iomega via USB2.0 port (built into laptop) and via the AKE card's USB3.0 port. Results are hopefully attached. The screenshot on the left with Seq Read = 29.9 MB/s is via USB2.0 and on the right is the results for expersscard USB3.0 Seq Read = 100.0 MB/s. Bang on what I was hoping for. I'll try copying some big files back/forth and see what I get.

Excellent testing that is truly impressive and bodes well for the Iomega Ego. To be honest, I wasn't sure I should even go ahead with this drive because of the forced firmware encryption (I prefer truecrypt, who knows what backdoor Iomega has installed in the firmware! But that's another story).

I hadn't used CrystaldiskMark before (I use HDTune) and I am truly impressed by your results, because even my internal 320GB HD doesn't get any faster than 65 or so MB/s...

The port on the expresscard is snug but not too tight so I find that if I slide the drive's plug in gently I can get it in without ejecting the card pretty reliably. Just pulling the drive plug out also pulls out the expresscard! I expected that the expresscard would be held in its port but it is not, so I have to hold the card in while pulling out the drive plug. This happens on both the ASUS and the DELL.

I guess the 54mm model is a bit flimsier, it definitely flexes a bit in the hand. But pressing the USB connector a bit does help with getting a tighter fit, so it's probably not going to be a big issue. I just don't like it too much, because laptops tend to be moved around and if the connection gets lose during a file transfer, well, you're in trouble

[triturbo]

Yes. They can be downloaded from here.

Thanks, I didn't even bother to install the ones that came with the card

So, my card has arrived today. Fits well, about 1mm in the laptop, but as far as it's not out, it's OK. The ports are a bit flimsy. Here are benches with my Rocketfish USB 2 enclosure and Hitachi 250GB 5400rpm in there (built-in USB 2 port / AKE USB 3 card):



When my USB 3 enclosure arrives I'll post more results.

[Judicator]

What I find interesting about those results is that the USB 3.0->2.0 connection has much higher sequential read/write than the USB 2.0->2.0 connection. That seems odd to me.

[triturbo]

It's odd to me as well, but I can't give explanation. I tried to transfer a movie (1.36GB) using either built-in USB 2 and AKE USB 3. With the built-in it was down for 48.81 sec and with AKE - 43.61 sec.

[DR650SE]

Here are some tests I ran

I ran some CDM benches on my drive to test out my . The first drive is a 640GB Western Digital 5400RPM Drive in a USB 3.0 Enclosure. I connected it on the first bench to a USB 2.0 port and ran the test. I choose 2000MB for the test because that is what I mainly use the drive for, moving recovery images and such, and one of the reasons I got the USB 3.0 card. The second CDM bench is the USB 3.0 Enclosure pluged into the USB 3.0 card. Again 2000MB. My third and bench, was to bench the 3.0 Enclosure/HDD off the USB 3.0 card, but also have the enclosure power through a second USB 2.0 cable for extra juice. I just wanted to see if the extra power affected the transfer speed. Obviously it had ZERO affect on speed. I then swapped out the drive for a 320GB 7200RPM Western Digital Scorpio Black, and the results were odd at first, than I reformatted and wiped the 7200RPM drive. The 7200RPM Drive performed a little better than the 5400RPM drive once it was wiped. I also had to use the power plug on the 7200RPM drive when connected to the USB 3.0 Expresscard.


USB 3.0 Enclosure 5400RPM Drive -->USB 2.0 port


USB 3.0 Enclosure 5400RPM Drive --> USB 3.0 Expresscard


USB 3.0 Enclosure 5400RPM Drive --> USB 3.0 Expresscard With USB 2.0 Power cord



USB 3.0 Enclosure 7200RPM Drive --> USB 3.0 Expresscard With USB 2.0 Power cord

[Coruja]

Do you need to use the power adapter for the usb3 express card?? I have a portable hdd which usually works off the USB power... BTW I have one of them coming in next week with two usb 3 ports

"oneabove" - no, the AKE Expresscard/34 does not have a power input - it just has a single USB3.0 port. The tests I ran were all with the Iomega Ego 1TB portable HDD connected only to the USB3.0 port.

The Iomega drive comes with a Y-cable with USB3.0 connector on one end and USB2.0 on the other. Plugging the USB2.0 end into the laptop (as well as the USB3.0 end into the Expresscard) didn't improve transfer speed that I could notice (I didn't test this with CryistalDiskMark though), so I concluded the Iomega drive is getting all the juice it needs from the Expresscard port.

[Coruja]

Excellent testing that is truly impressive and bodes well for the Iomega Ego. To be honest, I wasn't sure I should even go ahead with this drive because of the forced firmware encryption (I prefer truecrypt, who knows what backdoor Iomega has installed in the firmware! But that's another story).

I hadn't used CrystaldiskMark before (I use HDTune) and I am truly impressed by your results, because even my internal 320GB HD doesn't get any faster than 65 or so MB/s...

Glad that further info was helpful "83bj60"

I tried HDTune (the free one) first but it refused to test the portable drive via the expresscard - just gave a 'Read error!' right away and aborted the test. I don't know much about HDTune so I gave up with this and moved on to CrystalDiskMark as I've seen it shown in the Notebookreview reviews. I can't vouch for the real-world veracity of it benchmark values so perhaps they should be taken with a pinch of salt....

I did some more 'real-world' tests last night on my DELL at home and the drive I'm copying to-from onto the portable drive comes into play too. I have 2x500GB drives in my DELL; one a Seagate and the other an Hitachi. The Seagate outscores the Hitachi on CrystalDiskMark.

But copying exactly the same file (blu-ray ISO of size 43.2GB) from the Iomega to the hard drive gave the following result:

Seagate: Total time = 11 mins 10s: average speed = 64.5GB/s
Hitachi: Total time = 8 mins: average speed = 90 GB/s

Quite a difference! I'm certainly very pleased with the Iomega+Expresscard+Hitachi combo!

I ran CrystalDiskMark (default settings) on my DELL and result is attached.

I'll cheerfully admit I don't have a clue about the encryption on the Iomega drive or what it does so I guess it's not an issue for me

[deucelee]

thread hi-jack newby question here...is there a difference in speed between a usb 3.0 expresscard and a usb 3.0 built in to the laptop?

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

thread hi-jack newby question here...is there a difference in speed between a usb 3.0 expresscard and a usb 3.0 built in to the laptop?

Yes there is:

Unfortunately, you wont get the full USB 3.0 speed from this adapter’s loan port as it is limited to half that speed due to inherent ExpressCard bandwidth limitations. Still half of a whole lot of speed is better than ALL of nothing and still MUCH better than USB 2.0!

From: USB Cards - PCI Express & ExpressCard - Reviews, News @ Everything USB

[Judicator]

More specifically, Expresscard is limited to about 2.5 Gbps, while USB 3.0 is theoretically capable of 4 Gbps (or so, overhead will reduce this, but it will probably eat into the Expresscard limit too). Still faster than any current platter hard drive. You won't be saturating the Expresscard bandwidth with almost anything other than a SSD at present.