By the way, apparently this isn't the first chipset Silicon Image has released that is buggy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Image The 3112A apparently will work just fine until the point that you put it under a heavy load and it corrupts your data.
My understanding of things now is that Silicon Image believes this 3132 issue to be an issue with the enclosure chipset (Oxford Semiconductor) and is in no hurry to fix it. How they reconcile that stance with the fact that Windows and OS X 10.4.x work fine with the enclosures is beyond me.
What I do know is that if you Google Silicon Image 3132 or even add Leopard or OS X to that, you'll find a lot of people who are having this problem and are pissed off. They apparently do not know who their customers are and failed to keep current with the QA on OS X OS releases and common external all-in-one hard disks that are on the market. And this has caused a lot of bad press for them. I would say its a disaster for all the OEM's who resell a reference implentation and trust the Sii3132 drivers. Anyone buying one of those cards will now undoubtedly google the chipset and discover the problems others are having and avoid them.
Yes, this may very well be some weird compliance issue with the Oxford chipset, but the fact that it works under Windows & OS X 10.4.x doesn't help Silicon Images' position that its not their problem. It is their problem, and given that they supply the chipset for the only Mac-compatible eSATA ExpressCard/34, they must be unaware of the damage that is being done to their reputation by their refusal to address and fix the issue in a timely fashion. They must be unaware that a large number of vocal professionals use their cards during the generation of personal revenue. And they must be ignoring the emails from both vendors and end-users complaining about this problem.
Now I'm looking for another solution other than eSATA. I'm not going to waste money buying another drive enclosure that may or may not be compatible or may or may not get corrupted by their chipset. I think iSCSI over gigabit ethernet may be a workable alternative to eSATA for MacBook Pro's, but I need to find the best iSCSI initiator for mac and give it a try with a linux target.