Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

eSata very sluggish with Mac Mini

77slevin

77slevin

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 21, 2013
47
0
Belgium
I bought a LaCie eSata hub to thunderbolt to use with my Mac Mini, but I'm very disappointed with the performance. Browsing with the finder on the connected HD (Western Digital My Book Studio II) is very slow and indexing thumbnails of pictures takes ages. I did a few speed tests and read and write performance is a bit under what I have when I connect the disk with Firewire 800! I mailed LaCie support but they say that the transfers speeds are normal, and it's probably the WD My Book that slows it down. (Suprise suprise blame the other devices, not their own.) Thing is: I used this exact disk with a PC for 2 years connected to a Windows PC with eSata and didn't experience any slowdowns.
Has anybody else used the Lacie eSata hub on their macs and what was your opinion of the device?
 
G

g4cube

macrumors 6502a
Apr 22, 2003
760
13
It actually may be an incompatibility with the WD drive.

Did you actually partition and format the drive for your Mac? You did confirm it was OK with FW 800.

LaCie only recommends its own drives, and even then, does not say all LaCie eSATA drives are compatible. There may be some implementations of eSATA that have issues.

I have the device here with LaCie and Seagate GoFlex drives; both have good performance with eSATA that is faster than FW800. Sorry, don't have an eSATA WD drive here. What model do you have? WD case, too?

What are you using to confirm performance? Have you run Black Magic or AJA Disk Test apps?
 
77slevin

77slevin

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 21, 2013
47
0
Belgium
Did you actually partition and format the drive for your Mac? You did confirm it was OK with FW 800.
When I changed to Mac last year, I reformatted the drive to Mac Os Extended (Journaled) en put all the data back that was on it when I used it with the PC.

What model do you have? WD case, too?
It's a Western Digital My Book Studio II with 2 WD disks in RAID 1. This case has 1eSata port, 2 Firewire 800 ports and a USB 2.0 port. When I used it with the PC it was also in RAID 1 and when I bought the disk it came formatted for Mac, so I'm pretty sure they deem it Mac-compatible.

What are you using to confirm performance? Have you run Black Magic or AJA Disk Test apps?
I've used Black Magic to confirm speeds, but just using the drive browsing through files, it feels very sluggish. I've reconnected it with Firewire and browsing through the same folders went much smoother.
I'm at work right now, but when I get home I'll post the screenshots I took from Black Magic.
 
Last edited:
77slevin

77slevin

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 21, 2013
47
0
Belgium
As promised here's the black magic test with eSata:
JzprnCD.png


An here's the test with a Firewire 800 connection:
uVq2slx.png


The results are almost identical. Sadly I can't test the disk anymore with a PC because I sold it last year. My mind is made up, the hub goes back to LaCie.
 
philipma1957

philipma1957

macrumors 603
Apr 13, 2010
6,367
251
Howell, New Jersey
Last edited:
G

g4cube

macrumors 6502a
Apr 22, 2003
760
13
philipma1957 said:
test the hub with a faster drive. that is not the correct drive to test that hub.. do you have access to a faster drive?
Click to expand...


I have to agree. If you want to see faster performance, you could try setting up RAID-0 with the drives. IN RAID-1, you won;t be seeing any better performance.
 
R

rbk123

macrumors newbie
Mar 10, 2013
6
0
DiskSpeedTest.png

LaCie D2 3Tb thunderbolt external. Includes the thunderbolt cable. Using on a MacMini 2011 I7
 
R

rbk123

macrumors newbie
Mar 10, 2013
6
0
Yup, I know what was tried. I looked at the same solution as it lets you use your existing ESATA drives. My mini doesn't have USB3 so the only options were the ESATA ports and a native thunderbolt solution. In the end I felt the native thunderbolt solution was the best.

I had read some comments that the ESATA ports were somewhat picky as to which drives would connect and I decided it wasn't worth the trouble.

There are also Seagate thunderbolt adapters. The portable version is around $90.00 but doesn't include a cable. The desktop version (made for Seagate External units) could also work but it is around $180.00 and also does not include a cable. I have a number of external Seagate drives but they are all PC formatted and if I was going to have to buy another drive I decided on the D2
instead

As you are returning the unit and I thought I would give you another alternative to consider. If it doesn't fit your situation then of course don't consider it.
 
E

eyepea

macrumors member
Jul 20, 2012
91
0
Not that this helps You but it gives you and idea of what the LaCie hub can do, I have a newer tech raid 0 of 2 times 4gb drives and an owc raid 0 of 2 times 3 gb both running at read and write on black magic at around 215 megabits per second. Your drive in the enclosure might be a slower green drive? LaCie should run much faster so I think it is your HDD?
 
Mr. Retrofire

Mr. Retrofire

macrumors 603
Mar 2, 2010
5,064
519
www.emiliana.cl/en
eyepea said:
Not that this helps You but it gives you and idea of what the LaCie hub can do, I have a newer tech raid 0 of 2 times 4gb drives and an owc raid 0 of 2 times 3 gb both running at read and write on black magic at around 215 megabits per second. Your drive in the enclosure might be a slower green drive? LaCie should run much faster so I think it is your HDD?
Click to expand...
You mean probably TB and MByte/s.
 
A

Amu

macrumors newbie
Oct 23, 2013
6
0
Cape Town
Did you find a solution for the slow speed?
I just got the LaCie hub eSata, thunderbolt and connected eSata 2x WD my book studio 2 and the speed is not working slow like slow.
:(
The speed is 10x slower than I connect with Firewire 800?
 
77slevin

77slevin

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 21, 2013
47
0
Belgium
No, I did not find an adequate solution. Because the product was still in it's 7 days grace period, I sent it back and got my money returned.

I did try to work with LaCie support to try different settings but ultimately it didn't perform as advertised. :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom