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Express 34 eSATA card... any good?

D

Draddy

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 16, 2007
238
0
Hey, so I bought an express 34 eSATA card and have been using it with my external harddrive....

although it is faster, it doesn't seem to be as fast as I thought it would be...do I need to install drivers?

It came with a mini-CD, so I couldn't put that in my MBP, is there a a place online that I can download drivers from?

When I click on the menu bar icon it says "unknown vendor, mass storage controller"

Thanks!
 
What expresscard did you purcahse? Depending on the manufacturer, you might be able to pull drivers from their website (hopefully they have drivers for OSX, which I assume you are using).

If you are comparing the speed to a firewire 800 connection, it probably won't be that much faster, since hard drives still aren't fast enough to be able to get you the full amout out of an esata connection, even the raptors. (correct me if I am wrong on this) It should be much much faster than USB though.
 
aiterum said:
What expresscard did you purcahse? Depending on the manufacturer, you might be able to pull drivers from their website (hopefully they have drivers for OSX, which I assume you are using).

If you are comparing the speed to a firewire 800 connection, it probably won't be that much faster, since hard drives still aren't fast enough to be able to get you the full amout out of an esata connection, even the raptors. (correct me if I am wrong on this) It should be much much faster than USB though.
Click to expand...

checked the website... no OS x drivers..... and I'm assuming the windows ones were just to get it to work.

Now, why can't it be as fast as it says it should? I bought this harddrive and put it in This case ... as well as This harddrive in This case ... I assumed I should be about as fast as I can get.... my MBP doesn't have FW 800 so I cannot compare...I do use 400 and USB frequently..... and it is definitely faster.... but not as fast as I feel it should be (cost/benifit ratio... not being bus powered, vs. speed)

would this be something software would be able to improve?
 
My understanding is if you want the esata speed your case needs to only have the esata connection. If it has a USB/firewire connection it will bridge the data to firewire then back.
 
Arjy said:
It doesnt have FW800? What kind of Macbook Pro do you have?
Click to expand...

1st gen... core duo... for the extra wide track pad they gave up FW800 and a dual-layer DVD player... obviously re-instated on the following generations.
BrittQ said:
My understanding is if you want the esata speed your case needs to only have the esata connection. If it has a USB/firewire connection it will bridge the data to firewire then back.
Click to expand...
Could you explain a little more of what you mean? I don't really understand.
 
I seem to be getting roughly 50 MB/s ... which is far from the 300 MB/s possible... but much greater than the 2-3mb/s I got from USB.
 
The only way to get significantly faster speeds over eSATA is to use a 2-4 bay enclosure with a striped RAID 0. A single drive will only usually get 40-60 MB/sec.
 
JabbaII said:
300MB/s is theoretical. And "B" being megabits, not megabytes.
8 bits to a byte.

http://www.ratocsystems.com/products/subpage/ex30s.html#03
(Japanese web page)

That manufacturer claims practical speed of 60Mb/s on MacBook Pro.

You are not too far at 50Mb/s.

Same deal with USB2 @480Mb/s - the practical rate is lower of course.
Click to expand...
well, it's 3 Gigabits... which would be equal to around 300 megabytes right?

I just wish time machine would back up at a normal speed.... it takes so freaking long.

I found my card: http://www.ppa-usa.com/products/pcmcia/1172.htm

but no driver support for OS X.


So I guess I'm doing okay.... just wish it was as fast as it could be.
 
Draddy said:
well, it's 3 Gigabits... which would be equal to around 300 megabytes right?
[...]
So I guess I'm doing okay.... just wish it was as fast as it could be.
Click to expand...
Well, the harddrive just isn't that fast... 300MB per second, no single drive delivers that kind of speed.

- Martin
 
I've always thought investing in a eSATA Expresscard to use with a single external drive is a waste of money. The real advantages come with using some sort of RAID setup, as mentioned. It appears as if you have gotten modest gains from going eSATA, and that's as good as you could reasonably expect. If you were expecting huge speed increases from a single eSATA drive, then you were mistaken.
 
Draddy said:
well, it's 3 Gigabits... which would be equal to around 300 megabytes right?

I just wish time machine would back up at a normal speed.... it takes so freaking long.

I found my card: http://www.ppa-usa.com/products/pcmcia/1172.htm

but no driver support for OS X.


So I guess I'm doing okay.... just wish it was as fast as it could be.
Click to expand...


Hi.. My eSATA HDD (a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB) does 110MB/s. Didn't try it with FW800 as my enclosure doesn't supports it..

Anyway it might be your HDD not being fast enough. Are you using a 2.5" or 3.5" eSATA HDD?
 
aquajet said:
I've always thought investing in a eSATA Expresscard to use with a single external drive is a waste of money.
Click to expand...

If you're doing audio work it can also be a good idea. Running all your i/o (sample library disk, recording disk, audio interface) through the firewire bus can saturate it.
 
My question is, do all expresscard esata's have built in raid? I see some advertised as do, and some that don't.
 
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