I needed another external hard drive and apparently they've quit making eSATA and replaced it with USB 3.0. Of course, there aren't many PCs available with USB 3.0, and the Intel chipset with on-board USB 3.0 has been delayed until later in the year.

So I found this StarTech 2 Port PCI Express SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Card Adapter (model PEXUSB3S2) at Newegg.com for $24. Installation was quick and easy, and it's fast. You need an available PCIe x1 card slot. (Mine is PCIe Version 2.0, which I guess is supposed to be fast enough.)

I did a Win7 system image backup of two volumes totaling approx. 450GB to an external USB 3.0 Seagate 2TB hard drive (using external power) and it took about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Works for me. Seems almost as fast as eSATA (but nowhere near the USB 3.0 alleged 5.0 Gbps theoretical max, owing to CPU and disk/controller bottlenecks I guess).

NOTE: the supplied LP4 Molex to SATA power adapter cable is too short. You need this if you want to use bus-powered USB devices. I left it out because I'm only using an externally powered hard drive. If you need USB bus power you should order a longer power cable with the card.

Bonus tip after the jump...

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The Win7 system image backup does a block level shadow copy of your drive(s). The restore function is an all or nothing deal, that is, you can only restore the entire volume to the state it was in at the time of the backup, not individual files/folders.

But wait. It turns out the backup file is a standard virtual hard disk image (.vhd) file used with virtual machine programs. You can mount it like any other hard drive using Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management -> right click -> Attach VHD, browse to the .vhd file and open it (do NOT check "read only").

You can then browse it like any other volume, and copy/drag/drop files, folders etc. (Note: do NOT check "read only" when you open it or it will present as an unknown volume type.)

Once you're done, right click on the left pane of the volume info block in Disk Manager and select "detach VHD."

Not sure why Microsoft doesn't just build this capability into the system image backup/restore feature. Must have been a class action lawsuit by backup/restore software makers.

NOTE: One time when I tried this I checked the "Read Only" option when opening the VHD. The volume is unusable in that mode, and the next time I tried to backup to the external hard drive Windows system image backup said the volume was corrupted (it wasn't) and I had to reformat it before system image backup would recognize it again. Not sure if "read only" caused the problem or some other goofing around, but don't check "Read Only".)

P.S. The full Administrative Tools with Disk Management may only be available on Win7 Pro and Ultimate (and Server 2008).