Any Experience with eSATA PCI Card?

[BDWillis]

I'm looking for a way to speed up my current Pro Tools system, currently PT 8.0.1 cs2 on a Dual 2.5 G5, 4.5GB RAM, HD4 (Core/Accel/Process/Process in a Magma P7R4 chassis).

Until I make the full upgrade to a Mac Pro & new Magma backplane board, disk access seems to be my best shot at a speed increase... I'm working off either SCSI removables (ATTO UL4D & Glyph chassis), or Firewire 800; typically a pretty high edit density across 40 - 60 tracks; usually 44.1 or 48k, occasionally 96k.

eSATA specs are encouraging (approx 3x as fast as FW800), but it's not Digi approved (well, at least I think that's the case... I got some info searching here, then searched for compato info on the Avid site for 25 minutes before giving up in frustration — nice work, web dudes). I don't want to go internal SATA, as my CPU is racked & I need to routinely take drives to the LTO back-up rig, SO.......

***Does anyone here have experience / good results using a Port-Multiplier eSATA card in a PCI-X machine (or even PCIe), going to individual external drives **or** a multi-disk chassis in JBOD configuration (not RAID) such as the link below?

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-...ATA_Raid_Ready


Thanks very much for any insight you may share.

Warmest Regards,
Brian

[jeremyroberts]

Brian,

i put a RocketRaid 1522A into my G5 2.7 and it's been just great.

http://www.hptmac.com/US/categories.php?compatibility=2

it DOES NOT permit hot swap and it took a bit of hoop jumping to find the right pairings of eSATA drives and docks, but once configured, I have 2 full time eSATA ports and it was dirt cheap to do this.

In the 2 years since I did this, I would imagine there are more options.

NO issues with PT at all (currently like you, 8.0.1cs2, HD2).

Hope this helps.

J

[misterloop]

I´ve been using the Sonnettech PCI card for 3 years now with Lacie eSata drives with no problems at all! never had issues with track counts( usually 60-70 tracks + VIs). I´m on a PPC Dual 2.3 running 10.5.8 and Protools 8.01 right now, but it worked with Tiger and PT7 too.

[BDWillis]

Thanks Jeremy & misterloop, that's exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping to get.

If anyone else feels like chiming in, thanks in advance!

Warmest Regards,
Brian