External Sata Harddisk problem.

[Renzoken]

After long waiting and the perfect deal never coming i decided to buy a 500GB HD and a casing and just make my own.

I bought This Samsung HD It's a Sata Harddisk. And seeing it it supports S.M.A.R.T and other features like a Temperature sensor seeing screenshots on reviews.

And the casing i got is this

Now when i look at the HD it looks like this.
No info about it whatsoever. No Smart. No Temperature.
[IMG:930:663:07e061119b]http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s100/Sephi2K7/Misc/01-1.jpg[/img:07e061119b]
Normally it should look like this.. Showing info about RPM/Cache and other stuff.
[IMG:933:666:07e061119b]http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s100/Sephi2K7/Misc/02.jpg[/img:07e061119b]
Even HDtune showed nothing but just a Harddisk. No smart or temperature sensor either.

Now i'm just wondering did i do something wrong? Or should i bring this disk back? Or is it normal that you cant see detailed info about Harddisk if its in a USB external casing. Though my other external HD i got does show the info shown in second screenshot.

I also notice this...
[IMG:572:900:07e061119b]http://i150.photobucket.com/albums/s100/Sephi2K7/Misc/01.gif[/img:07e061119b]
First pic is how it should look. and the one below is from my external harddisk. And it tells me it has 0MB cache... Even though i know it has 16mb cache.. and it's even written on the harddisk...
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[thugangel]

So, the Seagate one is also in another enclosure? What kind of enclosure is it? The same one that you're using for the Samsung one? This seems to be a driver issue, either on the enclosure or the drive itself...

[Renzoken]

Mmm i guess it was a bit confusing...

I got 3 Harddisk.
1. Seagate 160GB . My laptop Harddisk. Inside my laptop
2. Samsung 250gb IDE, External Harddisk
3. Samsung 500GB Sata 2 External Harddisk

Problem is with #3 not showing any information.
The #2 and #1 both show RPM/Cache/Size. While #3 doesn't show anything. Even though it works perfectly fine. Now i heard the reason for it not showing anything is because the Sata disk can't give SMART data by USB. Though no idea where the guy got that info from. And even so i find it strange that #2 does show the info about the disk. Which is IDE though...
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[thugangel]

I can't trust what that guy is saying either. There isn't any reason for SATA-through-USB not being able to communicate and translate with the S.M.A.R.T. core. Unless the enclosure designed it specifically for the eSATA, but I somewhat doubt it. So I still think this is a driver issue; USB driver at most.

I can only think of one thing that may be able to fix this. And that is try to install the Windows 98 USB 2.0 & eSATA driver that came with the CD. (I think Windows 98 is the only one available. I could be wrong...). I think you're already on Windows XP Service Pack 2, but the generic USB driver is probably not good enough is what I'm thinking.

Or maybe you could find perhaps some kind of plug-in for the USB driver from the CD or somewhere on the net... But your chances of success of finding one is pretty low ^_^;

[Renzoken]

[thugangel]

i see. So the guy was trustable, lol.

You don't have to worry about seeing the cache of your external hard drives. The transfer speed is capped by the USB's bandwidth anyway.

As for the eSATA part, as you have said, there are two types of connection your enclosure can handle: USB 2.0 and eSATA. I was saying that perhaps the design of the system was focused on having the S.M.A.R.T. capability through eSATA only and not with the USB 2.0. That was all ^_^;

[Renzoken]

I always thought more cache improve performance and takes a burden off the Harddisk itself. Perhaps i was wrong informed. Isn't cache used for streaming off the harddisk? it loads a chunk in the cache already and than streams it from the cache to the laptop/pc itself so the harddisk doesn't has to do so many read/writes actions.

Basically i only store and watch anime episodes on my external harddisk. So i was wondering how usefull the 16mb cache actually is in that case.

And yes your right about USB being the bottleneck. Max upload/download to it goes with 21MB/sec. Which is acceptable, but my intern haddisk does it at around 45mb/s.

But still USB2.0 is nice.. especially if you got a old pc with 20gb of data which had tot transfer by USB1.0....
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[thugangel]

You are correct. Though, your USB is limiting the transfer (I guess it can be considered as performance) so you're not really getting the full potential of the hard drive. Your 16MB should help, though.

Let's say one letter is a megabyte and a file contains ABCDEFG. When you're transferring this data in a 2MB cache hard drive, it'd go something like this...

[Renzoken]

Mm thanks for explaining it. Basically large cache does improve the performance than. Or atleast it will ease the burden on the harddisk so it doesn't has to do so many read writes because it can cache in larger pieces.

But in the end it gives me 0MB shown on HDtune. But i just hope HDtune is wrong. But eitherway. I can never use the disk to it's full potention when in the external enclosure without the Esate connection so il just have to live with it. I just hope its reliable that's all i care for atm.

Thanks for helping out Thugangel
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