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10.6 compatible eSATA card for '09 Pro

Once again, thank you very much!
I finally got it running with WinClone. Had a few crashes while booting from the new drive, but now it seems to run. Finally. :D

Great drive by the way. I don't see much of a difference compared to the 500GB WD Green that I used before.

Unfortunately I have to wait till next year to mount the drive properly in the second ODD bay. Till then, the remote has to do the job. :cool:

dsc09697s.jpg
 
I'm glad you got it running. Winclone is great when you know your ways around some little issues. Bloody shame they got the guys to drop the little marvel of an app.
 
That's indeed a shame. Seems to be the only tool that can clone the bootcamp drive to another one.
I searched almost the whole day and I haven't found any other application.

Anyway, I'm still wondering how the heck you got the SATA cables up from the PCI bay into the ODD bay.
I can't even reach the ODD bay SATA connectors.
Is there any way to disassemble the PCI fan? I'm aware of the two Philips screws on the right, but I don't want to mess up the lock mechanism for the expansion cards.
 
Transporteur said:
Anyway, I'm still wondering how the heck you got the SATA cables up from the PCI bay into the ODD bay.
I can't even reach the ODD bay SATA connectors.
Is there any way to disassemble the PCI fan? I'm aware of the two Philips screws on the right, but I don't want to mess up the lock mechanism for the expansion cards.
Click to expand...

Actually I did it the other way round. I took the ODD frame out and removed the second floor under it. You get some generous access then to the hole in the bulk head. It is not as good as it was in the old design where you could remove the #1 HDD SATA header as well. If you use straight connectors and no 90° angled you can thread four SATA cables easily through that hole and a molex power cable on top. For the Molex I actually had to cut the wires because the connector is way to big to pass through. I have spliced the cables quite professionally I hope.

The logic board SATA connectors I did with long nosed pliers.
 
gugucom said:
The good news is that Winclone is back online again today! :):cool::D
Click to expand...

They show it working with OS 10.5. I assume you have no problems with Winclone under Snow Leopard?

One reviewer said, "This is a terrific program, but unfortunately it seems to have a lot of incompatibilities with Snow Leopard - for some people it errors when they try to back up, for other people it errors when they try to restore from a backup. If you're on Snow Leopard, I recommend staying away from Winclone until the problems are addressed. See their forum at 'http://www.twocanoes.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=4'."
 
Windows runs a particular hardware check which encodes the location of certain disk sectors in a boot address. Unless the clone application can rectify and update this special address in the boot record a cloned windows system will never run. Winclone knows the algorythm to adjust the boot record to the new hardware.
 
I received my orders this monday and the SATA power y-cable seems to fit perfectly. Definitely the better solution than DIY. :D

Unfortunately I'm about 1000km away from my MacPro, hence I can't mount the hardware.
However I've got some thoughts about the length of the SATA cable that has to reach from the additional SATA controller to the Windows drive in the lower ODD bay.
My SATA cables are the standard 60cm ones. Is that long enough to go from the controller, to the front of the Pro and then behind the logic board to the ODD bay?
If not I would order a longer one here in Germany and take them with me when I go back next year.
 
Back at my Pro and I just finished mounting the drive and card. Pictures following.

Unfortunately the drive (my Windows drive) which is connected to the eSata card does not show up on my desktop any more.

Do I need to install any drivers?
 
Transporteur said:
Back at my Pro and I just finished mounting the drive and card. Pictures following.

Unfortunately the drive (my Windows drive) which is connected to the eSata card does not show up on my desktop any more.

Do I need to install any drivers?
Click to expand...
Drivers can be found here, but they're basic (no RAID support). You could also try LaCie, as they also have an SIL3132 card, and they may have added some features (RAID and JBOD).

You might also want to check the cables. I've had problems recently with SATA cables not staying put (tabs that hold the cable in place appear not to have fully formed during the molding process, and always feel loose).
 
I get the intention that I bought the wrong card.

I first tried the SIL driver for the 3132 card without Raid support, as it is the only driver which is available for 10.6, beta though.

Neither the internal drive showed up, nor the external.

Second attempt was the LaCie driver, but after the extraction of the package it showed up as the exact same driver, just a newer version.
Installed that, same result as above.

Then I tried the driver that came bundled with the card. It is the driver with Raid5 support (completely nonsense by the way, Raid5 out of 2 disks? :rolleyes:). Anyway, this driver has no official support for 10.6. I installed it though. Directly after the finished installation I got a kernel error (first one with this machine by the way!). Ok, reboot and finally the internal drive showed up!
Nice.
To test the speed of the drive I run AJA system test, but after accessing the drive for just a few seconds, arrivederci, kernel error.

Ok, I popped the internal drive in one of the Mac Pro's sleds and there we go. Works like a charm, so the drive is definitely ok.
In addition to that, I connected the external again via eSata. It showed up, but my system said that it would need to initialise the drive first to use it.
Stupid thing. After re-connecting it using FireWire, all partitions of the drive showed up without any issues.


However, what should I do now? Through that crappy card out of the window and get a decent one for a little more money, like the LaCie card, or is there any chance to get this thing running?
 
Transporteur said:
I get the intention that I bought the wrong card.

I first tried the SIL driver for the 3132 card without Raid support, as it is the only driver which is available for 10.6, beta though.

Neither the internal drive showed up, nor the external.

Second attempt was the LaCie driver, but after the extraction of the package it showed up as the exact same driver, just a newer version.
Installed that, same result as above.

Then I tried the driver that came bundled with the card. It is the driver with Raid5 support (completely nonsense by the way, Raid5 out of 2 disks? :rolleyes:). Anyway, this driver has no official support for 10.6. I installed it though. Directly after the finished installation I got a kernel error (first one with this machine by the way!). Ok, reboot and finally the internal drive showed up!
Nice.
To test the speed of the drive I run AJA system test, but after accessing the drive for just a few seconds, arrivederci, kernel error.

Ok, I popped the internal drive in one of the Mac Pro's sleds and there we go. Works like a charm, so the drive is definitely ok.
In addition to that, I connected the external again via eSata. It showed up, but my system said that it would need to initialise the drive first to use it.
Stupid thing. After re-connecting it using FireWire, all partitions of the drive showed up without any issues.


However, what should I do now? Through that crappy card out of the window and get a decent one for a little more money, like the LaCie card, or is there any chance to get this thing running?
Click to expand...
Odd, as others have gotten it to work. :confused:

The only thing I can think of, is the combination of an internal and external are causing an issue.

You could try:
1. Removing the external enclosure from the card
2. Clean install (there's a potential mess with the different drivers installed)
 
I'm currently trying to set this thing up again.

After putting the card in the upper PCIe bay (if that matters), I connected only the internal drive and fired up my driver virginally 10.6.1.
The drive didn't show up, but I didn't expect it to do.
Then I installed the 10.6.1 drivers from SIL and rebooted.

Again no drive showing up.
I'm definitely stuck with this one.

I might have set the jumpers wrong, but I'm pretty sure that they are correct.
Even if not, any of the ports should work.

Edit:
It's definitely a software issue. I tried another set of cables and all possible jumper settings.
Booting Windows (which is what the card should be primarily used for) doesn't work as well.

Help please! :(
 
Alright, after reading this thread in the Apple support forum, I installed the Sonnet driver and it finally works! :)
(I hope my Mac boots the 64bit Kernel anyway).

So confirmed working with 10.6.1 and the '09 Pro, without kernel panics.

Now the big big minus.
It does not work with bootcamp!

Even after installing the Windows 7 64bit driver the partition does not show up in the boot loader.
What now?
The main purpose of this controller is to boot Windows. :eek:
 
Transporteur said:
Alright, after reading this thread in the Apple support forum, I installed the Sonnet driver and it finally works! :)
(I hope my Mac boots the 64bit Kernel anyway).

So confirmed working with 10.6.1 and the '09 Pro, without kernel panics.

Now the big big minus.
It does not work with bootcamp!

Even after installing the Windows 7 64bit driver the partition does not show up in the boot loader.
What now?
The main purpose of this controller is to boot Windows. :eek:
Click to expand...
Glad you got it working.

As per Windows, are you trying to use BC on the drive?
You'd need MBR to make Windows work.
 
Windows 7 is already installed on the drive (with the bootcamp assistant) and boots perfectly fine when connected to one of the Pros own SATA ports.
 
Transporteur said:
Windows 7 is already installed on the drive (with the bootcamp assistant) and boots perfectly fine when connected to one of the Pros own SATA ports.
Click to expand...
Yes, but the card has BIOS on it, not EFI. So you don't want to run BC on it to run Windows. (BIOS and Windows can't deal with BC, just as any other PC). Remember, once BIOS emulation kicks in, it's a PC. ;)
 
Oh crap, I see where this is going... I need to re-install Windows, right?

The question is, how to do that. :confused:

Just like I would do it on a normal PC? Inserting the CD and select the drive?
 
Transporteur said:
Oh crap, I see where this is going... I need to re-install Windows, right?

The question is, how to do that. :confused:

Just like I would do it on a normal PC? Inserting the CD and select the drive?
Click to expand...
Yes. Remove partitions, and reformat to NTFS. You won't be able to use Winclone on it is the limitation, as it won't have the Apple GUID partition scheme (which isn't working anyway).

If you want to be able to clone, use Acronis True Image 2009 Home, and it's not terribly expensive ($30USD). You could try Everything Outlet, as they have had it as a good deal before.
 
Again, thank you very much for your help, nanofrog!

I will try the Acronis Trial version. If it doesn't do the job, I just install Windows the normal way. There is not much data on it and the configuration is almost standard.
 
Transporteur said:
Again, thank you very much for your help, nanofrog!

I will try the Acronis Trial version. If it doesn't do the job, I just install Windows the normal way. There is not much data on it and the configuration is almost standard.
Click to expand...
:cool: NP. :)

I tried it out with RAID, and it came out with a big PASS! It's also capable of backing up and cloning Linux (multiple filesystems it's compatible with, just not HFS/+). Decent scheduling options too.

I'd definitely say give the trial a shot, and see what you think of it. :)
 
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