Express Card Esata issues with MBP

[wooferbitch]

I am running a MacbookPro with 4gigs ram. Protools LE with MBOX mini. This system is for fx editing on Pro Tools. I use Logic on this sytem as well as Final Cut Studio.

I have the sonnet Esata ExpressCard going to two 1 TB drives in a tower, the MBOX mini in the USB port. I use an external FW drive in the FW port when I am ready to save the session for transport to the post mixing studio. When I "Save Copy In" ( targeted to the FW drive ) the session saves and most of the time the machine crashes at the last minute.

I know the esata Expresscard setup isn't supported by Digi..but I have had no trouble running at least 24 tracks with a lot of edits.

Has anyone had similar issues ?

as a side note..I feel with everything plugged into all available ports, that the MacbookPro doesn't have enough juice to support all of the devices.
When I added an extrenal Monitor to the mix, wether I was running Pro Tools or Logic I would get massive shutdowns.

I run Final Cut Studio pulling HDV and DV off the Esata bus and have no issues when using the Apogee DUET, but when I run Final Cut Studio through the Mbox mini I crash quite often, especially when scrubbing.

frustrating.

[Maddawg383]

i'm haveing that problem right now with the siig esata card.
my system is crashing during recording at around 26-27 minutes every time.

did you ever solve your problem?

[JrummerJ]

I have a Macbook Pro (2.2 GHz Santa Rosa, 4GB RAM, 128MB video card) and I use both an external monitor as well as an espresscard. However, my expresscard is the siig fw400 card on which I connect my (non certified) WD MyBook external drive.

I am running Leopard (10.5.4) with PTs 7.4.2 and it is very solid. I would guess that there is something going on with the esata card, though I hadn't heard of that problem before. Why not just try the 400 card? I really don't think that should bottleneck and cause much of a reduced track count or anything. When I was having some issues, I spoke with Sweetwater's Digi Technician and he said that he runs a test session for troubleshooting purposes with 32 tracks and tons of plugs on the same laptop as mine, with an Mbox 2 Pro and a Glyph drive.

J

[Maddawg383]

Useing a FireWire expresscard will be my next test.
To see if its the esata card or the slot.