Devices
Computer: Apple MacBookPro, 15 inch, Late 2006, MA609LL
Boot-ROM: MBP22.00A5.B07 (EFI 1.4)
SMC-Version: 1.12f5
ExpressCard: AKE eSATA ExpressCard BC338
Store:
http://stores.ebay.at/New-tech-G-four-Store-338
Dealer:
http://myworld.ebay.at/nelson-338/
Price: Product 12.99 + International Shipping 0.99 = 13.98 USD (December 2009)
Good news
I had posted on 2010-01-17 in
#214 about quickly occuring data corruption & kernel panics under Mac OS X 10.5.7.
Meanwhile I use Mac OS X 10.6.8 and a series of long lasting and data intensive tests showed that the eSATA card now works flawlessly! All my issues experienced must have been addressed with the OS update, since the host machine and eSATA card stayed the same!
Details of the conducted tests
Code:
# Plug in your SATA card into your active system, no reboot necessary
# Monitor system.log during all read/write tests,
# either with GUI "Console.app" or within Terminal
tail -n 10 -f /var/log/system.log
# to check wether the following tests trigger any I/O errors.
## Test 1:
# Create a 10GB random data file on your internal disk
sudo dd if=/dev/random of=/Volumes/InternalDisk/testfile seek=0 count=10k bs=1m
# Copy the file from the internal to the external SATA disk
cp /Volumes/InternalDisk/testfile /Volumes/eSATAdisk/testfilecopy
# Compare original and copy
diff /Volumes/InternalDisk/testfile /Volumes/eSATAdisk/testfilecopy
# No differences found! :-)
## Test 2:
# Mirroring a large directory (60GB, thousands of folders and files)
rsync -avi --delete /Volumes/InternalDisk/some/directory/ /Volumes/eSATAdisk/some/directory/
# Then recursively compare for differences
diff -r /Volumes/InternalDisk/some/directory/ /Volumes/eSATAdisk/some/directory/
# No differences! :-)
## Test 3:
# Mirrored my entire internal drive (400GB in use, took about 5 hours) with SuperDuper.
# Compared a directory (30GB in ~15k file & folders) on internal and external disk:
# No differences! :-)