MBP Express 34 dual eSATA card 2 recommend?

[aka21stCentury]

Any suggestions for a quiet dual enclosure and express 34 dual eSATA port card for Mac OS 10.6?

No plans for hardware raid. The Sonnet card linked below is 133 mBs per second for each eSata connection (dual ports). The higher end card is obviously for hardware raid at 300 mBs per...

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonne.../TSATAIIE342P/

Enclosure to consider is also a dual with a fan (stick in WD Black Caviar 7,200s)

http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Ntt=owcmesatatbek&Ntk=Primary&N=0&Ns=P_ Popularity|1

There is no dB level measurement unfortunately and OWC doesn't have any specs on it. I called and spoke to a supervisor. Anyone know if this is a large diameter fan? The other Elite AL-Pro dual has a single 77 mm fan (Oxford 944 chipset) but a 25 dB rating with a pair of 7,200 Barracudas or Hitachi Deskstars. Unfortunately hardware spanning is questionable as to which drive contains the sample library.

Hoping to find a quiet 120 mm fan with a slower speed, just an empty enclosure with two eSata ports for two 3.5 inch drives (one for samples and session bu, the other audio).

Any recommendations?

Check out these two discussions: One is at CreativeCow's FCP forum, apparently lots of problems, some solutions to reinstalling the Silicon Image driver, etc. and/or J Micron, but mostly if you have updated to Snow Leo verses a clean install.

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/feedback/...d_reports.html (primarily Leopard)

Snow Leo http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1051087

Thanks Much. Hope this thread is useful to folks.

[Dism]

Any expresscard with the SIL 3132 chipset should be fine, just be sure to update to the latest drivers. I just bought myself a new one and it works perfectly.

[aka21stCentury]

I'm discovering it isn't easy to uncover which chipset (driver) is used by whom?

Also, any advice on the fan noise (or lack of it)? Most composers are extremely sensitive to small whining fans running at high rpms.

[Dism]

I have some links to appropriate hardware and drivers, but they are bookmarked on my mac at home. I'll post what I use and other useable stuff when I get home tomorrow.

[Dism]

Ok, from what I can see at OWC, this one should be fine.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Apiotek/EC0003D/

I don't think the Sonnet is necessary, and I've read about a lot of annoyances with that chipset. Aside from the fact that you probably won't need to mount 10 drives on it...

I recently picked up this one from my local computer shop:

http://www.byteccusa.com/product/xP-...2/bt-eces2.htm

...and it works like a charm. I bought a pair of shielded eSATA cables to go with, and have two drives going without any problems.

I'm not a big fan of pre-built externals because I like to do my own quality control when it comes to hard drives.

Personally, I use this enclosure:

http://www.macally.com/en/product/ip...?ArticleID=215

...and I slot them with WD Caviar Black 7200 500GB.

The one thing to note about these enclosures is that the wallwart they supply is underpowered. Basically, if you try to put in a bigger 7200 RPM drive, (say 750GB, or more) it won't run. However, you can just call up Macally after purchasing one of these and they will send you a better one for free.

Otherwise, they don't get hot, and the only noise coming from them is the spin of the hard disk itself. Runs lightning quick over eSATA, and it frees up your FW bus completely.

Finally, just remember to update your SIL chipset driver to the latest non-RAID (1.2.5.0) driver here:

http://www.siliconimage.com/support/...3&ctid=2&os=3&

...and you'll be laughing at how slow FW/USB is compared to eSATA.

[aka21stCentury]

Thanx.

The Macally is not a dual is it? That OWC empty dual enclosure with the fan has a straight eSata to Sata connection for each drive with no chipset. I was thinking of trying it out perhaps doing the resistor trick to slow down the fan if it is too noisy.

And thanks again: The Dynex express 34 card is no longer made, but Best Buy was carrying the dual port cards from them at one time. Sonnet is confusing as they both support port multipliers, have about 5 models (most are Raid 0,1) and I would prefer a straight through, as I am using Mac Drive on W-7 Pro 64 to host HFS+ files and need to mount only the AUDIO drive (not Sample drive) on the W-7 machine to copy over the wave files/session data.

My front eSATA connector on the Antec Tower goes straight to a single SATA socket on the ASUS motherboard. If there is a port multiplier it means a different driver i.e not the Intel (IHC10 non-raid, so not IHC10r) and trust me it is a pain, particularly with raid and that motherboard, which supposedly is fixed in the new bios update, allowing both IDE and full AHCI Sata II. Thinking the best compatibility is straight through SATA connections on the mac and only a single drive at a time on the PC for transferring files. (Ending up using NTSF 3G at the moment with USB-2, 1394b Oxford 934 but it's kind've slow)

Where did you get those well shielded eSata cables? 3 ft or more? Or is that the maximum length?

Appreciate it Amigo.