Home > Consumer Reviews > Cables Unlimited 1 -Port e-SATA Controller PCI Express Card (IOC7706)

I installed this in a Dell Dimension 9100 running Vista 32-bit. Drivers installed automatically and device worked immediately. Just wish e-Sata included power. I highly recommend this card.

Nothing better than a blazing fast e-SATA connection for fast back ups. This e-SATA, like all of them, is rated at 3GBps. However, the bottleneck is at the PCI-e connection which only transfers at 2.5GBps. Yet, compared to USB 2.0 (480 MBps) this is blazing speed.

This card installed easily and was immediately recognized in XP. I'm all set...until USB 3.0 comes out in the coming months.

This was my second eSATA card. The first one I installed "sort of" worked, but my backup software couldn't "see" it (Iogear card). This card seemed cheap compared with the Iogear card, but the installation software was much easier to use.

However, once I rebooted, my computer couldn't find the external hard drive at all. I did the usual "fixes" - rebooting, unplugging the external drive and cables, replugging same, etc. I even ran a couple of disk utility programs to "clean" my registry.

Still, the computer failed to "see" my drive. So, I unplugged the card, then plugged my Firewire 400 cable back into the computer and external hard drive, rebooted, and everything was fine again.

Since this was the second time my Dell Inspiron with XP failed to work with eSATA and the external drive (WD My Book 1TB) my conclusion is that there are driver compatibility issues with XP, or the Dell. Anyway, I am done with eSATA for now.

I will be searching the net for possible fixes for this problem. If you get eSATA to work for you with XP and/or Dell, then good luck to you.

It didn't work for me.

Despite the fact that the Iogear card also failed to work with XP at least it appeared to be of much better quality than this card. Of course, that doesn't mean that this card isn't OK, just seemed generic to me. I don't think this had anything to do with the lack of success at installation.

Update: I sent for another card from Cables Unlimited. IT didn't work. So, I sent for yet another card from Addonics. It also didn't work, so I swapped eSATA cables. Turns out the eSATA cable I had been using was defective.

Addonics card was identical to the Iogear card so they must have been made overseas in the same place. However, the software CD with the Addonics card was great - worked well, and I was able to get the eSATA connection working.

I measured transfer speed of a 2.5gb folder of .jpg pictures using a Firewire 400 cable then the eSATA cable. There was little difference. The Firewire took 9 minutes to transer to external hard drive, and the eSATA cable just a little over 8minutes. I tried the same experiment with various files/folders and the result was the same - the eSATA was not noticably faster than the Firewire cable, so why go to all the trouble of getting eSATA?

Also, my backup software, Windows Live One Care, doesn't recognize eSATA connections, only USB or Firewire connections. So, if you're using One Care it won't "see" your external hard drive with eSATA.

Other backup sofware did see the external drive with eSATA.

Conclusion: I'll stick with Firewire 400 and wait for USB 3.0.