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philipma1957

macrumors 603
Original poster
Apr 13, 2010
6,457
332
Howell, New Jersey
My thanks to the macrumors member that sent this card to me. link to card.


http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA2ME4E/

after putting card in my 2010 mac pro it did not work so it is not plug and play I went to firmtek website and downloaded this link


http://www.firmtek.com/download/



note this will go right to download > http://www.firmtek.com/download/SeriTek2SM2_5.4.1.zip < note this will go right to download



small 950kb file and the card works with 10.6.5 snow leopard.


what is attached? I have a 2 bay towerstor from sans digital with 2 wd raptors in a raid0 1.2tb total . = 1 sata port

I have a 2 bay thermaltake dock with a intel ssd. = 1sata port


I have an eight bay rosewill which is a rebranded sans digital links; they use 2 sata ports.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...6&cm_re=rosewill_8_bay-_-16-132-016-_-Product

or the clone



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ..._re=sans_digital_8_bay-_-16-111-140-_-Product

the two products above are the same except for the controller card. since i am not using either one I am using the 4 port firmtek card. well I have a 2 drive raid0 on the rosewill it uses 2 caviar black 1.5tb hdds in a 3tb raid0. it has a 850gb osx/file on it and nothing else.


first test I wrote zeroes to the 2 bay sans digital that houses a 1.2tb raid0 with the raptor pair. 180MB/s down to 140MB/s that is about the best the enclosure has done. I wrote over the drive 3 times no problems next test I am cloning an osx from the 8 bay rosewill to the 2 bay sans digital. the rosewill volume is a 3tb caviar black raid0 with a 850gb osx the towerstor has the 1.2tb raptor raid0 using superduper it is cloning at the rate of 178MB/s this is using 3 of the 4 ports on the same card. it is a decent card 4 port sata is nice but i find that it should be faster the most i am going to get with it is maybe 230gb when I have a bigger raid0 a 3 drive instead of a 4. the forum member let me know this will not work with drobo it will work with the 3 pieces i used.

a thermaltake 2 bay sata usb2 dock the 8 bay rosewill/sans digital and the 2 bay sans digital towerstor. I can see with a bit of tweaking and arranging I will have a lot of storage on hand.


I have not boot tested.

It quickly copied the 850gb osx/data file. did it at about 170MB/s average for a 850gb volume.

in a few minutes I will see if it lets superduper do a scheduled clone/backup. Well it starts the superduper backup via the scheduled method so this will be a good card for back. this backup is a fw800 to an owc qx2. so actually it is not is use for the update but does not interfere. i will need more testing. I have been told it can not boot we shall see and I will do a schedule super duper backup that directly uses the card.

I added an AJA thumbnail it shows two tests the 3tb raid0 is in the rosewill case it is 2 1.5tb caviar drives.

the raptor raid0 is in the sans digital towestor 2 bay . scores are good
the other thumbnail shows

the rosewill 8 bay

the 2 bay sans digital

the thermaltake 2 bay dock all hooked up
 

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