2011 27" esata mini pci-e help! Not a commell card!

[yongy]

hello!

just like to firstly say that i am a proud new owner of an AWESOME 27" i7!!! it seriously takes my breath away (yes, im easily pleased!!)

anyway, as per title, i've installed a Startech mini pci-e esata card, this one to be exact:

http://www.ebuyer.com/262166-starte...-internal-sata-ii-controller-card-mpexsata22i

and have 2 sata-esata cables coming thru the ram slots at the bottom. i havent broken the plastic above the ram slots to fit the cable, but instead, cut the rubber OFF the cable around the sata port and it fit thru fine...

now, the problem is, when i plug an external drive thru any of the 2 cables, the disk isnt showing! =( i've d/led the startech drivers AND the commell ones (for those who know) and its still not showing up!

does anyone know why, or have any idea???

many thanks!!!

 

[weckart]

That looks like a SATA card, not an eSATA card, so no hot-swapping. Does the hardware show up at all in System Profiler? I take it you are booting up with the external disks attached because they will not be recognised otherwise.

 

[yongy]

hi weckart

many thanks for your reply! yes, your right, its a sata card but im using it for esata purposes!

ive tried all combinations: booting up with the external drive in, plugging it in after, switching between the 2 diff cables - and none of these work...

however, the card does NOT appear on system profiler under Parallel SCSI where most ppl say it appears, which leads me to believe that 1) i installed it wrong (dont know how, its plugged in) or 2) i've got a duff card...

do you think im right? ive tried to install ALL the diff driver versions now from lacie, sonnet etc, and none allow the system profiler to show the card!

 

[weckart]

It is possibly a duffer, but unless you try it in Windows machine there is no way of knowing. My only experience of eSATA under OSX consists of a hackinDell using the onboard SATA (supported) and with an Apiotek PC Expresscard in my MBP, which was supported out of the box, even under Leopard.
Are the Sonnet and LaCie drivers tied to specific hardware? They might be if LaCie's USB 3 drivers are anything to go by.

 

[yongy]

i think the sonnet and lacie drivers are "universal" sil3132 drivers so "should" work. but either way, nothing seems to work even the latest drivers from silicon image.

i've researched (even more!) but it appears that the pci-e in the imac's are not "true" pci-e and therefore these cards cant utilise it? if that makes sense...

i'll try bootcamp-ing my imac tonight and see if windows reads its.

thanks

 

[lokiju]

Did you get this working? I'm getting tempted to add esata to my 21.5" 2011 base iMac so I can use a multi-bay external storage I'm eyeing.