CalDigit FASTA-6GU3 Pro

Anyone understand what they are saying with this statement from the "FAQ" page?

Connect a power cable to the FASTA-6GU3 Pro?
SATA ports not MacPro compatible?

1.Can I connect extra storage to the two SATA ports on the back of the FASTA-6GU3 Pro?
If you are using a Windows PC you can connect a SATA cable from your internal HDD to the FASTA-6GU3 Pro's SATA ports.
Then connect a power cable to the FASTA-6GU3 Pro and you will benefit from extra storage.
If you are using a MacPro you will not be able to use the FASTA-6GU3 Pro's SATA ports.



EDIT: They have now updated the web site and cleaned up the wording so that is makes more sense.

FCPEditor35 said:

CalDigit have just released the updated FASTA-6GU3 Pro PCIe card (USB3.0/eSATA). The USB 3.0 ports now feature faster USB 3.0 performance, and the eSATA ports are now full 6G eSATA for $169.

Their previous card was great for saving a PCIe slot on the Mac Pro. This will be a good option for connecting an external SSD drive.

http://www.caldigit.com/Fasta-6GU3pro/

Click to expand...

Do you have this card? Could you check to see if it supports non-storage USB devices (such as a keyboard)? The old one only supported storage devices.

More Info

hfg said:

Anyone understand what they are saying with this statement from the "FAQ" page?...

Click to expand...

The card has two internal SATA ports, but does not supply drive power, so to use an internal drive with it you need to connect the internal drive to a power supply. The Mac Pro does not support this in their normal SATA drive bays, so CalDigit just says it can't be done.

If you wanted to, you could put a drive in the optical drive bay (there's power there) and it would probably work. No promises.

ActionableMango said:

Do you have this card? Could you check to see if it supports non-storage USB devices (such as a keyboard)? The old one only supported storage devices.

Click to expand...

CalDigit claims to support the full USB spec and I'm typing this via a keyboard connected to the card vis USB, so at least a keyboard works.

BTW, I'm seeing the CalDigit USB 3 top out at around 250 MB/s when connected to my external RAID, compared to 365 MB/s write and 396 MB/s read connecting the same RAID to my laptop's USB 3.

Hi ...

This is a somewhat old thread which has been superseded through the efforts of ActionableMango at the following thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1501482/

You might find it of interest regarding USB 3.0 solutions for the Mac Pro.

I am using a 4Drive mounting adapter with a supplied power cable that plugs into the mother board power plug via a Y plug configuration.

It is the model DX4 from transintl here:
http://www.transintl.com/dx4.html

Very happy with the results.

haralds said:

I am using a 4Drive mounting adapter with a supplied power cable that plugs into the mother board power plug via a Y plug configuration.

It is the model DX4 from transintl here:
http://www.transintl.com/dx4.html

Very happy with the results.

Click to expand...

Or if power should be organized fast and cheap: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=18855446#post18855446

USB3 / eSATA card questions

I want to add USB3 to my Mac, for use with portable drives and a SD card reader.

I have a Mac 5,1 desktop machine, currently using an eSATA card for an external RAID. Can I replace my current eSATA card with the CalDigit card? Will the CalDigit card work with a USB3 SD card reader? It would be nice to use only one card slot for both eSATA and USB3.

Sorry if this has already been addressed, but I am a bit confused in the area of hardware, eSATA and USB3 cards.

I've read other posts on MR saying that USB 3 card readers work fine with the CalDigit Fasta6GU3 (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1569389/), but that throughput might be compromised.

This is my question as well - more specifically, how, if at all, it has improved with the new Pro version of the card: Fasta6GU3PRO.

http://www.caldigit.com/Fasta-6GU3pro/

Anyone know if the PLX chip on the PRO version of this card causes an overall throughput bottleneck?

Many people seemed to run into throttling on the older, non Pro version of this card, the Fasta6GU3.

If anyone has connected things to all 4 ports it would be great to know if overall throughput is impeded.

Thanks much in advance.

davidp158 said:

I want to add USB3 to my Mac, for use with portable drives and a SD card reader.

I have a Mac 5,1 desktop machine, currently using an eSATA card for an external RAID. Can I replace my current eSATA card with the CalDigit card? Will the CalDigit card work with a USB3 SD card reader? It would be nice to use only one card slot for both eSATA and USB3.

Sorry if this has already been addressed, but I am a bit confused in the area of hardware, eSATA and USB3 cards.

Click to expand...

I seem to have purchased and tried most of the cards discussed on this forum. I went from all eSATA to all USB 3.0 ports, but found I still needed the eSATA capability with my Mac Pro 5.1 and lack of Thunderbolt.

I had tried the original CalDigit Fasta6GU3 early in the game and was dissatisfied with the throughput. However, I now have the updated CalDigit Fasta6GU3 PRO and it seems to fully satisfy my needs for both eSATA and USB 3.0 including hubs and flash card readers for my cameras.

Thanks much hfg-

Curious if you've used one of the internal Sata III ports for a boot drive? I would like to use it for my SSD Boot as well as connecting drives/card readers. My worry is that the throughput might suffer in this configuration.

Cheers.

stmp said:

Thanks much hfg-

Curious if you've used one of the internal Sata III ports for a boot drive? I would like to use it for my SSD Boot as well as connecting drives/card readers. My worry is that the throughput might suffer in this configuration.

Cheers.

Click to expand...

I have not used the internal SATA III ports yet ... my plans are to cable them up into the optical bay where I have a dual 2.5" rack in the second disk position. This will be for additional SSD expansion if needed in the future.

Currently, I am booting from a 1TB Apple PCI SSD in the PCIe slot #2.