SUPER slow eSata transfer speeds

[Lumen]

So I bought a hard drive and set it up in an enclosure and now I'm using it as an external. For reference, I bought this drive. I'm using it to backup media on my laptop. My laptop is a Toshiba M300-037.

For the USB connection, I'm getting write speeds of around 12-14 MB/s, which is tolerably slow. eSata, I understand, is supposed to be faster, but it is actually much, much slower for me. It was averaging about 700 kb/s, but I was told to expect speeds 2-3x the rate of the USB.

Is this what should be happening?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Check out this page, which has someone in a similar situation and a whole lot of advice on ways to handle it: http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7588_102-0.html?threadID=247198

 

[Lumen]

Thanks, I've got the eSata running a little faster than my USB now, and I managed to improve the USB speeds, too. The only thing left to do is see if I can upgrade the firmware for the hard drive, but I'll have to spend some time at Western Digital's website and make sure any upgrade would still be compatible with my enclosure first.

 

[chardman]

Just looked up that particular Toshiba laptop, and it looks like they have standard USB ports, rather than USB2 ports. If that's the case, it's simply gonna be slow. If, on the other hand, your machine does have USB2, then gleefully ignore me.