I need an eSATA card for my new mac pro

[Aaron Neitz]

I’m with you.

Just bought a $20 idontconnect eSata card from Fry’s… Mac sees it, but drives don’t show up. No time for this nonsense or troubleshooting. Wants something that works.

[Arthur Aldrich]

High Point makes cards that work with most flavors of the Mac OS. I have used other cards that use the Silicon Imaging chip that don’t work under Leopard.

<https://www.hptmac.com>

–
Art Aldrich
OTEK TV
Leader, NJFCPUG
http://www.njfcpug.org
http://www.otek.tv

[Bob Zelin]

ProMax doesn’t make a card. However, they do sell PCI-e SATA cards from companies like Sonnet Technology, who makes the Sonnet E4P, which is about $289, and is an excellent card. It is true that Silicon Image is no longer writing drivers for the 3124 chipset, but it still works, and if you look at Sonnet, Cal Digit, DatOptic, Dulce Commander, or other low cost eSATA cards, you will notice that they all use the 2.0.3 driver, which is the “old” Sil3124 driver that was written for 10.4.x, and still works.

As for Highpoint –

this is the equivalent Highpoint card, which uses the Marvel chipset (which is the same as the Sil chipset, becuase it is compatible) –
https://www.hptmac.com/US/product.php?_index=5
This is the RocketRaid 2314, which is a port multipler eSATA card, just like the Sonnet, but according to the Highpoint website, has 10.5 current drivers.

The 2314 is about $170 street price. I also believe that this is the card that G-Tech uses for their cheap GSpeed product. Since you are considering buying this, why dont you take a look at the Highpoint manual and installation guide and GUI interface. With other Sil based products, you load your driver, plug in your drive, and go to work. With the Highpoint – not exactly. Take a look for yourself.

And yea – 20 dollar cards don’t work.

Bob Zelin

[Ken Jones]

I am using the Lycom LYCeSATA-4e PCIe 4 Port. It is $184.00 at MacGurus.com
https://www.macgurus.com/productpages/sata/LYCeSATA-4e.php

I have two 7.5TB RAID 0 towers (one is a backup) that are running with eSATA port multipliers. The Lycom has worked flawlessly so far.

I used to have a HighPoint card. It was the biggest PITA. I HATED the web based interface! With the Lycom I just use Apple Disk Utility and it is good to go.

[Tony Brittan]

FWIW, check out Caldigit FASTA cards. I tried a couple others with no success because the silicon image drivers wouldn’t work (even when tech support swore the should). Then I tried Caldigit (who writes thier own version of the drviers for Mac) and it worked perfectly!

Tony Brittan
Apple Certified Pro – Final Cut Pro
islandshoreproductions.com

[Jeff Handy]

There must be some big difference between the Caldigit and the others. The Caldigit is only $56. Any insight there?

HandyGeek

[Neil Sadwelkar]

One cheapo method is to use the two extra SATA ports in your MacPro as external ports with this adapter cable.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MPQXES2/?APC=XLR8YourMac09

Mind that these parts are not hot swap. So I guess that means you need to power down the mac Pro when you need to swap drives.

I haven’t tried this myself.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Bob Zelin]

Jeff –
Cal Digit no longer manufacturers the Fasta 4X or the Fasta 4e. It was a great card, but they don’t make it anymore.

The Fasta 2e is a 2 port card for $56 from Cal Digit but it is not a port multiplier card (like the old Fasta 4e, Sonnet E4P or Highpoint) which means that is will not support multiple drives per SATA port.

As for the Newer Tech product, this is an internal SATA buss extender for the 2 native ports on the MAC Pro. These are also not port multiplier ports, and will only run a single drive or SATA device. AT $24.95, it is very attractive, and the actual electronics is built into the MAC already ! Just understand the limitation of what you are getting.

Bob Zelin

[Loren Latker]

That was then, this is now with 10.6.1 Snow Leopard.

I have a Lycom 4 Port PCI Express Host Card which is basically now a door stop with 10.6. I don’t use or need RAID and have the card jumper set to JBOD.

The card was installed when I upgraded to 10.6 and then 10.61, and seemed to function. Then last week I started getting kernel panics, which stopped when I removed the card. There went five external backup drives!

I don’t want to spend $288 for the Sonnet card after just spending $180 for the Lycom three months ago, but I don’t trust that there will be an updated driver for the Lycom card anytime soon. So what to do, other than buy another card?

The HighPoint RocketRaid 2314 Serial ATA II Controller Card is only $169 from Digiconcepts, but is it the same as the one HighPoint says is Snow Leopard ready out of the box? I assume it will support my five external SATA drives in JBOD just like the Lycom, and be no more difficult to set up? After all, I already have HighPointIOP.kext and HighPointRR.kext in System/Library/Extensions.

Any insight will be appreciated. Thanks.