Can I connect two PC's through eSATA instead of LAN?

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Maybe there is another solution to this. Tell me if this makes sense to you: If a GigaLan has a max theoretical transfer rate of 125 mb/s, but our Hard Drives can only transfer at [actual] rates at say 50 mb/s, then maybe the HD is the bottleneck on a GigaLan network. I am wondering, would upgrading the Hard Drive to a faster drive (such as a solid state drive) help maximize ethernet transfer capabilities?

I meant just by itself with a standard usb cable. Plugging in one to the other won't get you data transfer capabilities.

Of course it's possible to write up something which uses the USB protocol to send/receive data, which is what that link you posted does. Whether someone has written and released a program to do this via USB3 I don't know. If nothing has been released yet, your other options would be...
1. Buy two 10Gbps ethernet cards. Probably be about $300 each.
2. Buy two fiberchannel cards. Could cost anywhere from $60 to $500, depending on what you get.
3. Buy two more 1Gbps cards and configure load balancing on the PCs

Hello, thank you for the suggestion. I was not aware that a 10Gbps network cards existed! That may be a solution for us. However, in addition to the two network card, wouldn't I also need a 10Gbps hub as well?

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Just to clarify something said earlier, there ARE NAS setups that have multiple eSata ports along with network and firewire ports, but, the eSATA can not be used to network, it's used to daisy chain in most cases several NAS boxes.

Also, you are correct, if a drive arrays maximum bandwidth is 50mb/s, then well, it will bottle neck data transfers over a gigabit lan or higher connection. But only when transfers involve the slower drive.

Just remember, everything in the PC world only works as fast as the slowest component can support.
 
If you're connecting over a network and not peer-to-peer, then yes you'll need a 10Gbps capable switch.

The two computers now are connected to a network, but I only need this high speed connection between them. So it would be peer-to-peer between the two computers, but still maintaining their connections to the network as well. Is this possible?

I see that there are dual port server cards. Is this perhaps what you were referring to? How would a peer-to-peer setup look like with these? They are meant for servers, but can they be used simply to connect two PC's together?

Many thanks. I see I need a network specialist here, as this is far beyond my knowledge base.

Also, you are correct, if a drive arrays maximum bandwidth is 50mb/s, then well, it will bottle neck data transfers over a gigabit lan or higher connection. But only when transfers involve the slower drive.

I have been reading of home server setups using these higher grade server NIC's getting data transfers of 2+Gbps or more. I wonder if that is mainly just rhe server NIC, or if there is additional hardware necessary for this...

Anyway, all I know is that something is bottlnecking in my computer; my transfer rates are only 20-30 Mbps at best. Strangely enough, my transfer rates between two internal drives is also the same as the network transfer rate. I would have thought my internal drives would be able to transfer files faster than over the network (which is why I thought maybe it was the hard drive being the weakest link).
 
How much data is there to transfer between two PCs? Is this a one-off thing or is one of the PCs generating a lot of data that needs to be transferred regularly?

It is a continual stream of data being exchanged between both machines 24/7, maybe 20-50 GB per day. Currently, these computers are slowing down our entire workflow, because our business depends on these processes getting done quickly.

I should also note, money is not an issue here. If we need to spend $1,000 for a proper setup, we will do so. But we also do not need overkill. I am just looking for speeds better than 20-30 MBps. Ideally, if we can transfer at maybe 50-70 Mbps, that would be sufficient.

Interestingly, looking up the tranfer rates on this WD Green is not comforting; it seems these green drives are only best for storage and nothing else;

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/3.5-hard-drive-charts/Maximum-Read-Transfer-Rate,666.html
 
Yea, the greens are purely for storage, they aren't high speed drives. If your drive can't cough up or store the data fast enough, then there is no data that can be sent over the network, upgrading the hard drives that handle all the data to faster/higher end drives with high through put, will help raise your transfer speed.

Look into RAID 5 arrays and controllers, there are two benefits, one, high speed data transfer from the entire array, two, redundancy, it takes 3 drives of the same size, you get the storage of two, minus one, if one fails, you don't loose any data, you can just throw in another drive, and have the software rebuild the array. And with there being more than one drive with the same data, you have increased read/write speeds. I have a gigabit network, and actually have issues getting it to max out for one reason, not a single drive in my network, can handle reading or writing the data being transferred. If I send data from my server to a laptop, the laptop bottle necks and the server will send all that it can, but, because the drive on the laptop can only write the data so fast, the server just kinda sits there sending data at a slower rate for the laptop. If high speed is needed, look into 10k RPM hard drives, they aren't cheap, but they are quite a bit faster than traditional drives, especially when in a PROPERLY configured RAID array.

BTW, my Raid 0 drive array contains two Western Digital Black drives, both are 7200 RPM, and can read/write 124mb/s, but, if copying data from those to another drive on the machine or network, they only send half that as the other drives just wouldn't be able to keep up, thus, once again, the rule of the slowest link in the chain slows everything else down.

If you need absolute speed, make sure all network cards are gigabit or better, all cables are Cat6, and your switchs support full duplex and are gigabit capable, and look into the 10k RPM hard drives, they aren't cheap, but they are snappy.

Curious, can you make a list of all computers, and there specs, plus the switchs/routers/network cards in your network for us? That way we have something to really go based upon, and also the amount of data being transfered on a normal day?
 
Thank you for the info. I just order a Corsair 128 GB Solid State drive to do some testing on. I also have a cavelier black arriving shortly as well that I will compare with. In regards to your question, my setup is basically consumer grade at the moment;

-Trednet TEW-639R Gigabyte router
-Gigabyte GA-P55 motherboard w/ integrated 1GB ethernet port (both computers)
-i7-870 (pc 1) and i5-760 (pc 2) OC'd to 4.0 GHz...both computers have Windows 7, 4 GB 1333 G.Skill RAM, and a basic Geforce 8600GT and 8600GS
-Synology DS109 NAS

Transfer rates to the NAS are the same as internal transfer rates (about 20-30 mbps max). All of the machines currently have Cavalier greens, which could be causing the bottleneck.

However, there is something I cannot explain here that maybe you can help me with. As I stated in my original post, I can work on the files locally with no speed issues (not transfering, just processing data). But when a network computer processes the same data over the network, it slows by more than 70%.

This is confusing me, because if the problem is only with the hard drives, then why am I able to work locally on an cavelier green with no speed problems, but not over the network?

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That is a good question..... I honestly don't know, hopefully someone else here does... It COULD be your integrated network cards, but I honestly don't know at this point.
 
You could put a Cavalier Green in one of the other PCs (as a storage drive) and test transfer rates between the two drives. That would give you something to compare the transfer over the network to.
 
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