E-sata question

[tamasdragon]

I plan to buy an e-sata expresscard for my mbp. My only question is will it work with protools? Firewire for the digi003, and e-sata for the external drive. Is it a good solution?
Tamas Dragon

[tamasdragon]

Noone has ever tried e-sata with protools?

[DigiTechSupt]

Is there a reason you want to go e-sata for the external drive, rather than firewire, other than the possible speed advantage (which really isn't much since you're still limited by the drive throughput..)?

I can only speak from some very brief testing I did with an esata card - it seemed to work fine, but the session was very small and not many plug-ins. I ended up switching to a FW400 expresscard shortly afterward, so the esata card got no real testing.

Keep in mind that this is my own personal experience - Digidesign doesn't recommend or qualify e-sata cards or drives at this point.

[Tbassist4]

I asked the same question a few weeks ago with not too much response. It's what I plan to do though. I'll post a few links at the bottom of ones that I was looking at. There is an interesting issue with certain chipsets within the expresscards which can cause problems, but I'll let you find what works. I can't remember necessarily what I found that was wrong with any of these, it was so long ago, I'll post back when I remember. Anyways, here's a few that should work well. The only big compatibility issue that I found was with Seagate Free Agent Pro external hard drives and the Sonnettech expresscard. It seems there's something odd about the oxford chipset in that one particular Seagate Drive. Otherwise you should be good.

As a post note, I saw a post on a blog this morning that said that the Macbook Pro uses a USB controller for the expresscard slot, which I don't think is true, but I'm not certainly. Can anyone verify this?

Here are the links:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...20express%2034


http://www.sonnettech.com/product/te...express34.html


http://www.eblazingtech.com/servlet/...ATA-for/Detail

[Tbassist4]

Originally Posted by DigiTechSupt

Is there a reason you want to go e-sata for the external drive, rather than firewire, other than the possible speed advantage (which really isn't much since you're still limited by the drive throughput..)?

I can only speak from some very brief testing I did with an esata card - it seemed to work fine, but the session was very small and not many plug-ins. I ended up switching to a FW400 expresscard shortly afterward, so the esata card got no real testing.

Keep in mind that this is my own personal experience - Digidesign doesn't recommend or qualify e-sata cards or drives at this point.

I believe reason why you would want to use an eSATA card is because it will allow the best throughput on the expresscard slot. You cannot effectively use a FW hard drive on an MBP, since both the FW 400 port and the FW 800 port are on the same FW bus. So, when the FW 400 port is running, the FW 800 port is forced to run at 400 speeds. I don't particularly like the idea of running both devices off of the same bus, it's just asking for trouble in my opinion. It'd be exactly like daisy chaining for an extended period of time, which doesn't seem like a stable solution.

Why would a FW expresscard be any better or worse than an eSATA expresscard? They both end up sending data through the expresscard, so in essence, they would not behave like either eSATA or FW, but rather like a PCI express. Is this correct, or am I totally wrong in this assumption?

[DigiTechSupt]

Why would a FW expresscard be any better or worse than an eSATA expresscard?

It would be better in that we have at least a body of evidence to show that it works properly with FW (even if it's not tested or qualified officially). We don't have enough data on eSATA to say one way or the other.

[mlange]

Originally Posted by DigiTechSupt

It would be better in that we have at least a body of evidence to show that it works properly with FW (even if it's not tested or qualified officially). We don't have enough data on eSATA to say one way or the other.

Aside from the drive being external to the system's hardware, what's the actual difference with an esata and a sata drive? Mine appear to operate identically.....

[tamasdragon]

E-sata is the same as sata, but external. I would like to use a firewire 800 expresscard for my wd studio editions, but cannot find one, which is compatible with 15,4 mbp. If you can recommend, I'll be happy.
Tamas Dragon

[albee1952]

FWIW I have run test sessions on an eSATA drive with zero problems on my PC. Can't imagine that Mac would have any troubles.

[JrummerJ]

Originally Posted by tamasdragon

E-sata is the same as sata, but external. I would like to use a firewire 800 expresscard for my wd studio editions, but cannot find one, which is compatible with 15,4 mbp. If you can recommend, I'll be happy.
Tamas Dragon

Here is one:
http://www.siig.com/ViewProduct.aspx?pn=NN-EC2822-S1

I have the 400 speed one from these guys and it works great with a 15" macbook pro.

J