Sata I or II?

[chuffman]

I'm considering buying a N5200, but have a couple of questions about the internal disk connection.
Does anyone know if the N5200 (or pro) supports 'true' SATA II or does it only support SATA II disks in SATA I compatibility mode. i.e. does it support 3.0Gbps data rates or only 1.5 Gbps internally?

Secondly, can the 5200 support eSATA and network users simultaneously? Has anyone done this?

Thanks!

[tankslappa]

Aug 4, 2008 21:28:37 GMT 7 chuffman said:

I'm considering buying a N5200, but have a couple of questions about the internal disk connection.
Does anyone know if the N5200 (or pro) supports 'true' SATA II or does it only support SATA II disks in SATA I compatibility mode. i.e. does it support 3.0Gbps data rates or only 1.5 Gbps internally?

Secondly, can the 5200 support eSATA and network users simultaneously? Has anyone done this?

Thanks!

Strictly speaking there is no such thing as SATA II, although having just checked the box of my 5200Pro, Thecus also write SATA II! Tut tut... Anyway, I think you're both talking about SATA 3Gbs (well I know you are), so it's a yes, 3Gbs SATA is native, although I don't know if it really makes any difference by the time the OS has done it's raid thing. It would be interesting to do some speed tests to see if the drives really have any impact.

I think the eSATA is host mode, to allow you to connect an eSATA drive to the 5200, not for you to connect the 5200 as an eSATA drive to a PC.

You can connect the 5200 via USB to a PC as an external harddrive, which it can do at the same time as serving network users. Unfortunately you cant access the same data. You have to mark part of your RAID for use as the USB disk only, which is a little annoying.

Having said that, if you want to have the 5200 connected to a non LAN PC directly and at the same time have it serving other LAN PCs, you can just use the second LAN port to do a direct link to the machine you don't want on the LAN. If the PC has a Gigabit LAN you won't even need a cross over cable, Gb LAN sorts that out automatically, it might even sort it out with only the 5200's Gb connected to a 100Mbs PC NIC, although that's just an educated guess as all my PCs have Gb LAN.

Hope some of this helps