[Niklas Wikman]

And surely… I will have to go for Firmtek and their enclosures… since they are using that Sil3132 chip… ARGH!

[Niklas Wikman]

Bob,

Thanks again for great advice. I hope that Firmtek will be around when it’s time for me to buy a RAID array.

(And I cross my fingers and hope that the Firmtek will be nice with my current single SATA disks…)

[Niklas Wikman]

What array should I buy, the day I go into HD and need the speed and storage?

I eventually bought the Firmtek – they are a bit cheaper than Sonnet and I hope it’ll work just fine…
*fingers crossed*

[Niklas Wikman]

Bob,

You’re great. Thanks for your tip.

However, I do not have any array as of today. Just single SATA disks, in different enclosures (WD MyBook, LaCie d2 Quadra, some “bare bone” SATA to eSATA enclosure, where I put bare Hitachi Deskstar drives for backups, etc).

The question is, if I go for the Sonnet E4P, will that later work with (for example) G-tech SpeedRAID?

I just sent an e-mail to the Nordic reseller for the Fasta 4e, just to compare its price with the Sonnet E4P (which I do think you recommend, after all?) If I later decide to go for array(s) – which arrays will work with the E4P?

[Niklas Wikman]

And after speaking to Sonnets tech support, they tell me that the E2P uses the same 3132 Silicon Image chip that LaCie does… *sigh*

Now I’m choosing between the E4P (different chip) and the Highpoint RocketRAID 2314 instead.

Decisions, decisions, decisions… argh!

[Niklas Wikman]

Eric,

I’m just into buying a 4-port eSATA for my Mac Pro. I’m choosing between the Sonnet E4P and the Highpoint RocketRaid 2314.

No G-tech SpeedRAID (yet) but might be in the future.

What card do you suggest I buy? The 2314 is somewhat cheaper. Not sure I’ll need all that RAID stuff…?

[Niklas Wikman]

OK, I’ll do a re-install of the Aja drivers on Monday when back at work.
No pre-processing of audio – it’s recorded from the camera.

Normally I do not have to mixdown or render audio files when they are just syncs, but I could of course do that.

(But I always mixdown audio prior making self-contained QT files for later processing/encoding).

All footage (audio, video, P2 files) resides on the same FW drive.
(Have never even tried to keep assets on anything but the same drive…)

[Niklas Wikman]

Oops, I obviouslly forgot to write that I’m with the IoHD. It resides on the internal FW800 port on the Mac, and then I have a PCIe adapter with two FW800 ports, for my external drives.

[Niklas Wikman]

Thanks Jeremy.

I ordered two Sonnet e2p today. (less than half the price for 4 ports, than buying the e4p card).

[Niklas Wikman]

FWIW:

I have discovered (with help from the Apple Disussions forum) that my eSATA PCIe card is a LaCie card.

I downloaded the drivers from their website. No luck.

Then I spoke to a Swedish dealer’s tech support. They told me that I first have to take out the adapter from my Mac Pro, then install the drivers and then put the adapter back in. (You should of course shut down between…)

And – lo and behold – now my bare bone SATA disks shows up (they are connected via cable to the LaCie PCIe adapter) and my OWC enclosure shows up as well. (Since it uses FW for power, I can’t really tell if it’s mounted as FW or eSATA…)