SATA 3 Anyone!

Loa said:

Same set-up, but my 4 bay enclosure works fine with this card. Don't know why it won't work with yours.

Loa

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Was it just plug & play?
How are your jumpers setup on the card?

I have one internal SATA port enabled and one external ESATA port enabled.

Hello,

My card's jumpers are set-up for 1 internal (boot drive) and one external, and both ports work fine and at the same time. Have you tried switching the jumpers around?

Loa

Loa said:

Hello,

My card's jumpers are set-up for 1 internal (boot drive) and one external, and both ports work fine and at the same time. Have you tried switching the jumpers around?

Loa

Click to expand...

I will play with the jumpers today.

When I originally tested the JBOD I put two disks in the top shelfs and neither of them mounted nor did the 1,2,3,4 lights turn on. I tried one drive on the bottom shelf and I can hear the drive spin up and the number 1 light turns on, but it does not mount on my system.

Hello,

I'm sorry: I have two esata cards in my Mac, and the ASM1061 doesn't support my external enclosure. An old sil 3132 card does the trick, but at sata2 speeds.

Sorry for the confusion.

Loa

I am using the cheap Amazon card in my 2008 Mac Pro and I'm getting decent speeds from my SSD. I have set the jumpers to give me one internal and one external; I can connect an external eSata drive, but it's not hot-swappable; I have to restart to see it. I was able to get hot-swaps when I set the jumpers to 2x external. Has anyone else succeeded in getting hot swappable eSata from this card whilst having their SSD connected to the internal port?

wildatheart said:

Has anyone else succeeded in getting hot swappable eSata from this card whilst having their SSD connected to the internal port?

Click to expand...

Ignore me - hot swappability has appeared from nowhere, it seems. Working now. Happy days.

Vapor matt said:

Ok as promised a picture of how it looks inside my mac pro

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Could you please repost the pic? Seems it was removed. Thanks!

Honbe said:

Maybe it would be easier and better to use this: http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_id=189

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This looks interesting, how does it work exactly?

crjackson2134 said:

This looks interesting, how does it work exactly?

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It looks like they provide a mounting tray with PCB that connects the drive to the backplane SATA power but they split off the SATA data bus to a connector that can be routed to their RAID card.

It's a shame that no one (as far as I know) has taken advantage of the fact that all the SATA connectors on the main board are not only routed to the ICH but also to the top slot where Apple's RAID card was designed to live. A 3rd party could offer a fairly elegant solution for providing SATA3 connections on the backplane using this aspect of the design if they wanted to. I guess the market is too small to support the required R&D or perhaps there's some necessary firmware switch that's not possible to reverse-engineer.

VirtualRain said:

It looks like they provide a mounting tray with PCB that connects the drive to the backplane SATA power but they split off the SATA data bus to a connector that can be routed to their RAID card.

It's a shame that no one (as far as I know) has taken advantage of the fact that all the SATA connectors on the main board are not only routed to the ICH but also to the top slot where Apple's RAID card was designed to live. A 3rd party could offer a fairly elegant solution for providing SATA3 connections on the backplane using this aspect of the design if they wanted to. I guess the market is too small to support the required R&D or perhaps there's some necessary firmware switch that's not possible to reverse-engineer.

Click to expand...

So this card intercepts the SATA connection for processing the data. I wonder if RAID must be used, or is it possible that it CAN serve as a regular SATA interface.

no electronic parts on PCB, it is very simple adapter.
here is my spare PCB:

Okay, so this board plugs into SATA/POWER ports that an HDD would normally engage. If this thing is between the normal connector and the HDD, doesn't it prevent the HDD/SLED from being able to slide all the way in?

SATA3 ports on Mac Pro early 2008 PCI-e cards

My Mac Pro early 2008 (2x2,8 Quad-Core Intel Xeon; 6 GB RAM; ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, with 10.8.5 and 10.9.2) was slow in some Finder actions, in Photoshop too and in particular after Mavericks update, so I decided to install two ssd + 1 3,5" HD in the optical bay and searcing around Google and in various threads I found some PCI-e x2 cards not expensive, all have already been mentioned here.

Running around Google I learned that the first easy option is to use the two SATA II ports on the board of the Mac Pro, but I have seen also PCI cards that can increase the speed with the SATA 3 ports at a reasonable price.

I bought a pci-e card based on a Marvell chipset with 4 Internal SATA ports, it's giving me very good results, so now I'm very happy, the Mac seem a new one!

Hi Guys

Has anyone had difficulty getting these inexpensive SATA III cards from eBay which have the ASM1061 chipset to work?

Just received one and when I connect eSata drives to it nothing, nada, zilch!

System information sees the card and says the drivers are there but it doesn't see, mount or connect to any eSata HD's?

Ebay listing specs says supports OS X 10.6+ and I'm running 10.8.5.

Would be grateful for any any ideas, suggestions or solutions?

Regards

Hello,

Do you have external ports on the card as well? If so, have you checked the jumpers? Maybe they're set to external ports.

Loa

Loa said:

Hello,

Do you have external ports on the card as well? If so, have you checked the jumpers? Maybe they're set to external ports.

Loa

Click to expand...

Bingo!

Yes, the card generally either referred to generically or as an LT107 has 2 external and 2 internal ports and no information was supplied on what its default configuration is or how to configure it!

And with NO documentation supplied with the card and only a mini CD with Windoze drivers (inc. USB 3.0!) how is one to know? Even when I referred the issue to the HK supplier I only got the normal incomprehensible and irrelevant Chinglish response which is less than no help!

Turns out their is a small table on the card itself conveniently without information on which configurations refer to the internal and external ports! And the shipping default configuration was with both internal ports hardwired/active and therefore not the external eSata ones which is what it was connecting to hence no communication! So the opposite of what you mentioned but nevertheless pertinent and prompted further investigation.

So for anyone considering these cards, which seem to be a little wonder for the price, be aware of this default configuration and that it be can be changed to either one internal and one external active or both internal or both external active but NOT all four active concurrently. Here's a truth table with internal/external heading and a photo of the little guy which should help.





So off to do to some tests now with internal and external drives.

Hope this helps others and thanks for the heads up Loa.

Cheers

TT