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Has anyone ever used this? (pcie esata card)

philipma1957

philipma1957

macrumors 603
Original poster
Apr 13, 2010
6,416
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Howell, New Jersey
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well, they certainly seem to be some kind of "über-cards" :D.... suposedly they work and boot under almost any OS, no drivers needed for OSX, and the price is great. My gut tells me it's not very likely it works that well - but that's just a hunch.

So, what's their return policy? I mean, in case you buy any of them and it doesn't deliver... If their return policy is not straight forward, I would pass - the amazon seller seems to be in Germany, with only 3 vendor reviews and 33% of them negative, so....

But if you take the risk, let us know how it goes...

cheers!
 
OWC (macsales) has basically the same (with faster speeds, 500MB/s) for the same price. I would rather go with them.
nwtheropciecard.jpg

Link
 
kellen said:
OWC (macsales) has basically the same (with faster speeds, 500MB/s) for the same price. I would rather go with them.
Click to expand...

I agree... OWC all the way due to their customer service and mac experience.

I would just add that the MaxPower card you cite is not bootable on any mac platform. It seems no eSata PCIe card is - at least the ones OWC sells (I thought the Sonnet one did, but no).

The cards cited by the OP claim they are indeed bootable - but as I said, I doubt it. Anyway...

hwojtek said:
Isn't a simple bracket to make use of the extra 2 SATA ports on the mainboard of the Mac Pro much cheaper?
Click to expand...

Yes - around 20 dollars... but it also has some shortcomings, like not being hot swappable, and the fact that newer MPs do not have the extra sata connections earlier models offered... so to connect it you would sacrifice at least one internal sata port.

cheers!
 
From my experience experimenting with these 3rd party PCI-e cards, only the ones with JMicron chipsets works out of the box without any drivers and bootable. One thing that sucks however is they don't support Port Multiplier. i.e. if you have an external closure that supports two or more HDD, only one will be detected.

If you happen to find one with the Silicon Image, SIL3132 chipset, it needs drivers to work, not bootable but has support for port multiplier.

Hope that helps in any way. Have a good weekend. Cheers!
 
eemzah said:
From my experience experimenting with these 3rd party PCI-e cards, only the ones with JMicron chipsets works out of the box without any drivers and bootable.
Click to expand...

cool... I've been looking for a bootable/hot swapable PCIe eSata card with 2 ports... I don't know about the chips on the cards OWC sells, but none of them appear to be bootable...

Can you recommend a specific one with this JMicron chip (for a 2009 Quad MP)?

thanks
 
I will second that JMicron boots into 2010 and 2009 mac pros. I found one on ebay for under 15 bucks.

Pros :

1)it boots
2)low cost

cons :

1) one port not two
2) slow for esata 120MB/s
3) no PM only sees one drive


I am hoping the german one with 2 ports for 50 bucks works to boot and does pm. I also hope it is faster then 120GB/s

Also to the poster that has also used a JMicron do you have a two port one or one port? I need the two port.
 
Last edited:
Which is the better one to go for since they made a RAID version as well that's only $10 more.

kellen said:
OWC (macsales) has basically the same (with faster speeds, 500MB/s) for the same price. I would rather go with them.
nwtheropciecard.jpg

Link
Click to expand...
 
Good find!
Not really expensive for a 4 port card with PM support (up to 20 drives).
Pity that they don't have a 4 port 6Gb/s card, that would be the ideal card for me.
 
Transporteur said:
Good find!
Not really expensive for a 4 port card with PM support (up to 20 drives).
Pity that they don't have a 4 port 6Gb/s card, that would be the ideal card for me.
Click to expand...
The chip needed to do that hasn't been released yet, nor has a 6.0Gb/s PM chip.
 
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