eSata on the Mac Pro?

[eMagine]

anyone tried eSata Raid?
I currently have 4 300GB sata in a Raid0+1 configuration on my PC (getting the MacPro on Friday) in an eSata enclosure. I'd like to migrate that enclosure to my Mac Pro.

I will be putting 3 500GB's inside the MAC Pro.

If i get an eSata PCIE card will OS X be able to drive it?

thanks.

 

[Macinposh]

You can route a cable from the 2 free sata slots from the mobo.
Sneak it out via the rear slots.

Some people apparently have buildt esata setups via that way.

But, i have no idea how those ports see your eSata devices, or how to power them..

Apparently the market for the PCI-E eSata cards are quiet at the moment, but I would guess that in few months manufacturers start to put out them.

 

[Altimeter88]

I had purchased this eSATA enclosure from Newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145388
and I connected the PCI eSATA cable to one of the two extra SATA ports located behind the front fans. It is a bit of a tight fit but with some needle-nose pliers it is pretty easy to connect the cable to the port.

As far as detecting the drive you need to power up the Mac Pro with the Enclosure turned on and then OSX will automatically mount the drive. I tried turning it on while in OSX and it didn't automatically detect until I rebooted.

Some people have reported that eSATA doesn't work with the quad-interface enclosures from OWC or G-Technology that have USB/FW400/FW800/eSATA and it looks like it may have to do with the drive connecting through a controller chip in the enclosure. The enclosure I use only has USB so I think the SATA bypasses the USB controller chip and connects directly to the drive.

 

[eMagine]

I got my Mac Pro yesterday!
I connected my 4-drive eSata Enclosure (with Sil37126 Port Multiplier integrated) to my MacPro's extra SATA port. The port showed up in Disk Utilities as an SATAII port. However, the port does not seem to be "Port Multiplier-aware" in that it only saw one of the HD's in my enclosure. I will use that one drive for the time being until i find a solution.

Right now I cannot find any eSata adapter cards for Mac Pro's full length PCI Express.

 

[jdwl]

Silicon Image have a pci express sata controller for intel macs:
http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?id=32 <- product specs and drivers.

 

[bob5820]

Silicon Image have a pci express sata controller for intel macs:
http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?id=32 <- product specs and drivers.

Its a start, but this is only the cotroller. Has anyone released a PCI express card yet?

 

[StealthRider]

Its a start, but this is only the cotroller. Has anyone released a PCI express card yet?

The "controller", in this case, is a PCI-Express card.

 

[phantasm10]

I had purchased this eSATA enclosure from Newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145388
and I connected the PCI eSATA cable to one of the two extra SATA ports located behind the front fans. It is a bit of a tight fit but with some needle-nose pliers it is pretty easy to connect the cable to the port.

I was wondering, did you you a righ-angle or left angle SATA cable to connect to the motherboard?

 

[eMagine]

I was wondering, did you you a righ-angle or left angle SATA cable to connect to the motherboard?

I just used a regular SATA cable. but it was VERY tight against the fan bracket.

I'll need to find a right angle cable in the future.

 

[eMagine]

Silicon Image have a pci express sata controller for intel macs:
http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?id=32 <- product specs and drivers.

that's just the controller chipset, not the actual card.
i still couldn't find a full length PCI Express x16 card that has the chipset or an "port-multiplier-aware" chipset on it.

i can find tons of the short PCIE cards though.

 

[[G5]Hydra]

that's just the controller chipset, not the actual card.
i still couldn't find a full length PCI Express x16 card that has the chipset or an "port-multiplier-aware" chipset on it.

i can find tons of the short PCIE cards though.

16x for a SATA card? A super high performance RAID card would be hard pressed to even come close to 4x. Also if you use 16x on an expansion card the graphics card would be knocked down to 8x at most. You don't need a full length card anyway and there are plenty of ones you could use from Sonett, SeriTek, WiebeTech and lots of others with port multipliers, some as low as $50.

-Jerry C.

 

[eMagine]

found it:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/wiebetech/tces0/

Mac Pro
The Tera Card TCES0-2e PCIe SATA host adapter will work in the new Apple Mac Pro models when the SiI-3132 Mac driver version 1.1.6 is installed. This driver is posted on-line at the Silicon Image web site. You should know that version 1.0.4 will not work properly with the Mac Pro. This same Mac driver can also support the FirmTek SeriTek/2SE2-E. However, the FirmTek card will no longer support SMART data when the Silicon Image SiI-3132 1.1.6 Mac driver is installed.

If you own a FirmTek SeriTek/2SE2-E SATA host adapter, I would recommend using the FirmTek 2SM2-E driver with the Apple Mac Pro system. You will find it on your FirmTek CD. It allows SMART data to be passed to Mac OS X and works well with the FirmTek SeriTek/2SE2-E on a Mac Pro system. However, the 2SM2-E Mac driver version 5.1.5 does not support boot capability.

As of September 1, 2006, the Sonnet Tempo E4P, E4i and the RocketRAID SATA host adapters do not have working Macintosh drivers for the Apple Mac Pro. They are working on them and I hope to test them soon.