MaxPower eSATA 6G hanging/pausing?

[Katagi]

Hello,

I am running Mac Pro 2009 with latest SL (10.6.7), just added NewerTech MaxPower eSATA 6G card and attached an external drive via it.

It behaves very very strange. Works very fast & normal but hangs for 30-70 secs every minute or so. Example: I am copying 1GB file, it copies fine & fast like 300-400 MB, than simply hangs for a minute or so, than resumes.

This behavior makes it almost impossible to use it, since even Finder is hanging every minute when I am browsing external disk.

It has nothing to do with the disk itself since I've tested it with 2 different disks from different manufactures (different enclosures as well). And by the way both of them are working just fine with FW 800.

I've also found this thread in German talking exactly about the same problem. The user here mentions that it's also not related to eSATA card itself since he has the same behavior with Sonnet card as well. Unfortunately no solution.

Err... I am frustrated and don't really now what to do now :-(

Any advises? Thanks!

 

[nanofrog]

What firmware is your system running?

I ask, as some revisions had trouble with eSATA cards in 2009 systems (B08 has issues issues for example, yet B07 works correctly).

 

[Katagi]

What firmware is your system running?

I ask, as some revisions had trouble with eSATA cards in 2009 systems (B08 has issues issues for example, yet B07 works correctly).

Boot ROM Version: MP41.0081.B07

Seems that I have B07 that should be working fine as you said...

 

[nanofrog]

Boot ROM Version: MP41.0081.B07

Seems that I have B07 that should be working fine as you said...

Hmm....

Off-hand, there's a couple of other things you could try (proverbial shot in the dark, but has been known to happen and cause instability in the past):

1. Check the power management settings (i.e. HDD's set to spin down, and it's not working correctly - try disabling it all together).
2. Completely re-install the card and drivers. Ideally, even OS X before re-installing the card (PITA).
3. Could be a bad eSATA cable (not exactly uncommon).

 

[Katagi]

Finally I've found some time to research this issue and I've found the problem.

To my surprise it was not related to hardware at all...

One of partitions I was mounting is encrypted with PGP (PGP Desktop for Mac is running) and it seems that it caused this strange behavior!

I've played a bit with disks and found that even others saying that this controller is not hot swappable I was able to connect and disconnect my disks on the go without any limitations. Just unmount and disconnect, than connect again - all works smoothly.

And while testing hot swapping I discovered another extremely interesting thing. This mess with the disk caused by PGP happens _ONLY_ after new boot. If you dismount all disks, disconnect them and connect again they work just absolutely fine (even if PGP!).

So the conclusion is: don't use PGP encryption on eSATA connected disks or connect them _AFTER_ the boot (you can always unmount than disconnect/connect to get them working in case you see them hanging).

Hopefully this will save some time for someone since I've found other posts on other forums with similar problem. It's not hardware related (well, at least in my case)!

 

[beaker7]

Getting same behavior here with that card and the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2. Not using PGP.

 

[Katagi]

Getting same behavior here with that card and the Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2. Not using PGP.

Did you try connecting your disks AFTER the boot?