Help choosing a good performing eSATA pc express card for MBP
by chris forrester
on
Jul 3, 2009 at 4:26:16 am
Hope someone here can help me with a new purchase :-) I currently own a macBookPro 17" (brought almost 3years ago). I wish to get a pc express card for it to connect an external esata hard drive (most likely raid0 type as I do video work). I have seen and read about sonnet cards, and also noticed lacie sell a card. What are the recommendations here from users for a card that will give me good perfromance, I would rather pay more now than suffer slower speeds later.
I am not really sure what I need to be looking at with regards to specs. I am not really interested in daisy chaining more than one drive per port, I think doing so will slow my bandwidth.
All suggestions welcome, and if you think posting to a different forumn category will help please also let me know (the hardware one I spotted was for windows :( )
Thanks in advance
-Chris
PS. Basic specs from my machine if these are of use to anyone.
Model Name: MacBook Pro 17"
Model Identifier: MacBookPro1,2
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP12.0061.B03
SMC Version (system): 1.5f10
Re: Help choosing a good performing eSATA pc express card for MBP by Gene Gilbert on Jul 10, 2009 at 6:38:43 pm
Hi Chris,
We would recommend the Sonnet Tempo Pro for your Macbook Pro. We have found that it gives good performance, and it works with our eSATA products. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Re: Help choosing a good performing eSATA pc express card for MBP by chris forrester on Jul 14, 2009 at 10:07:20 pm
I was thinking this might be the card to invest in. I am sure it is worth the price point it stands at.
Am I correct in thinking the difference is I can get 100MB/s per port instead of the cheaper non pro which only give 50MB/s. I have purchased a WD My Book studio Edition II (before I knew of G-Tecs products they have obviously a good name in video editing) http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=410
I am hoping to hook this drive to the MBP I have(2006 version) and get full speed drive access from it on the one port, one drive. I have this WD drive as Raid 0 and was wanting to boot from it and load video from it. Just generally have quicker access speeds to my files. I will be backing up regularly so I am willing to risk the loss of data booting my system and storing data this way. I just hope to gain some more performance from my machine whilst doing my compositing.
Perhaps you can confirm some of my thoughts here. (I might have my MB/s mb/s mixed up though ) :-P
Re: Help choosing a good performing eSATA pc express card for MBP by Gene Gilbert on Jul 14, 2009 at 10:25:14 pm
Hi Chris,
You are correct that the Pro version is nearly twice as fast as the standard version, and that speed is available for each port, so you will get 100MB/s+ from each port. With RAIDED drives on the eSATA bus, you will definitely see a speed improvement. I usually keep my project files on my internal drive, and my media files on the faster external drive.
Re: Help choosing a good performing eSATA pc express card for MBP by Rich Sigerist on Nov 4, 2009 at 8:58:48 pm
Related question here. Just purchased my 5th G-Raid. Already own 2 500 Gig, 2 3TB and just purchased a 4TB for a half-hour weekly reality show. For the moment I'm working on a new 17" MBP with only 4GB RAM (will upgrade soon) and I noticed G-Tech's recommendation of an eSATA CardBus adapter. I have frequent sync issues when outputting my shows to BetaSP. About half-way through I'll get a glitch and then the rest of the audio and video in the timeline will be about 3 frames out of sync. Will using a CardBus adapter from my MBP to my single 4TB GRaid help this? Currently it's connected via FW800.
I also often have to shift my audio 3 frames after bringing DV footage into timeline but that might be an issue for another forum.
