Hi, I am removing my 640Gb starup drive and 2x500gb (which have been stripped raid 0) and replacing them with 1 SSD via spare Sata and 4 x 2TB western digital drives. I still have important data on the 3 drives that I am going to remove. I need to get an external enclose and thought the fastest way would be via esata. That means I need a PCI esata card. Can anybody recommend one that is garunteed to work on the Mac Pro 4.1? The reason I want to go esata is because eventually I wil be clearing those drives and using the enclosure as a backup.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Mac Pro 4.1 esata card
- Thread starter Tazdaman
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Hi,
That's nice but quite pricey, whats the fastest speed the Mac Pro can read/write using a card like this?
I was looking at this card http://sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_e2p.html as I thought the Mac Pro can't get anywhere near 6Gps
That's nice but quite pricey, whats the fastest speed the Mac Pro can read/write using a card like this?
I was looking at this card http://sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_e2p.html as I thought the Mac Pro can't get anywhere near 6Gps
Well, it depends on the drives. My SSD is internal, but I could probably pull it out and test it via my Voyager Q dock. It reads/writes to my external LaCie disks at 115MB/second, if that helps. If you had an SSD, I believe it will read/write as fast as the drive itself is capable, but less than the theoretical limit of 600MB/second.
I had a Newer Tech 2-port eSATA only card in there before, but it didn't support bootable disks, nor hot plugging. I had to reboot to see drives hooked via eSATA, and that was annoying. Plus this has two USB 3.0 ports.
I had a Newer Tech 2-port eSATA only card in there before, but it didn't support bootable disks, nor hot plugging. I had to reboot to see drives hooked via eSATA, and that was annoying. Plus this has two USB 3.0 ports.
If I buy an external sata enclosure and install 3 7200rpm drives what is the maximum speed I could read write at?
Basically my thinking is there is no point purchasing a card which allows up to 6gps as the Mac 4.1 bus may not even allow as the max bus speed is 3gps.
The Sonnet Tempo SATA E2P 2 Port ESATA PCI Express Host Adapter Card allows Up to 125MB/sec is that the maximum I can get from my Mac Pro using an external enclosure or can I get faster speeds with a better card?
I'll have to swap my SSD with the HDD backup to see what happens. The SSD in the internal SATA 2.0 (3Gb) runs at 230MB/sec write, 266MB/sec read. If it goes faster than that via the eSATA card, that will be interesting.
I can't test my RAID tower through the card, since it runs via mini-SAS connectors. I know it runs up to 1101MB/second via the Areca card in the PCI slot in my Mac Pro, so I'd be willing to bet this 6Gb card will run close to the max of 600MB/second... maybe 525MB/second or something? Faster than 125MB/second for sure.
I keep reading two different numbers and forget that SATA 3.0 (6Gb) is actually 750MB/sec theoretical, and the 600MB/sec is probably closer to real world speed. So I'd expect about that from this card.
Any PCIe card sporting the ASMedia ASM1061 chipset will work without additional driver installation in 10.6.8 and 10.7. (http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2011/08/increasing-disk-performance-sata-6gbs.html)
There's no need to pay a ridiculously high premium for "official" Mac compatibility.
Just search eBay or google for "ASM 1061". There are cards with 2 external or 2 internal ports or 1 of each kind of ports.
Not sure about bootability; will have to look into that.
EDIT: Those cards are bootable.
There's no need to pay a ridiculously high premium for "official" Mac compatibility.
Just search eBay or google for "ASM 1061". There are cards with 2 external or 2 internal ports or 1 of each kind of ports.
Not sure about bootability; will have to look into that.
EDIT: Those cards are bootable.