Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

AL iMac eSata Installation

iMac eSATA mod

Hi,
I thought of installing with the LEDs, but 2 reasons stopped me.

1. I had no connectors inside the computer, so the LEDs wouldn't have lit up - they would just be decoration.

2. The LEDs themselves weren't the problem, it was their pins soldered to the bottom of the adapter that gave me problems - if I had not removed them, the board wouldn't sit flush on the aluminum case. They would poke through the mounting tape.

Hope this helps
Mark
 
kram7211 said:
Hi,
I thought of installing with the LEDs, but 2 reasons stopped me.

1. I had no connectors inside the computer, so the LEDs wouldn't have lit up - they would just be decoration.

2. The LEDs themselves weren't the problem, it was their pins soldered to the bottom of the adapter that gave me problems - if I had not removed them, the board wouldn't sit flush on the aluminum case. They would poke through the mounting tape.

Hope this helps
Mark
Click to expand...

I see where 2) is a problem, but wouldn't the LEDs have gotten their power and signals from the SATA cables plugged into the adapter from the PCIe card?
 
iMac eSATA Mod

fhall1,

I thought so too, but no, power is supplied to the LEDs through what looks like jumper pins. You can see them in the picture of the adapter - they're right behind the LEDs. Its a completely separate circuit from the SATA cables. The iMac motherboard doesn't have a power cable to connect to the jumper pins (as far as I know).

All the solder points for the SATA and eSATA connections are flush to the bottom of the circuit board, but those 8 pins (4 jumper pins connected to the 4 for LEDs) stick out way too far on the bottom. If you install with the pins in place, the adapter sits too much at an angle. You could pad the bottom with more tape, but then it moves closer to the motherboard than I would like.

I did try to order a SATA to eSATA adapter bracket without the LEDs (I only found one online), but the company I ordered from was out of stock.
 
With diy connectors like the one below, you could run the individual wires out vent holes and just have pigtail connector or route them to a project box.

No cutting needed.

ux_a09040100ux0268_ux_c.jpg
 
Hey Mark-

Love what u did. I am thinking of changing my pcie card to either the dual sata or the USB 3.0. Questions for u are:

1. Is the esata hot swappable?
2. Is it truly 3Gb per sata channel?

Let me know. Thanks.
 
imacmusic said:
Hey Mark-

Love what u did. I am thinking of changing my pcie card to either the dual sata or the USB 3.0. Questions for u are:

1. Is the esata hot swappable?
2. Is it truly 3Gb per sata channel?

Let me know. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Hi imacmusic,

1. Yes, it acts just like a FW800 or USB connection - only faster!

2. Ive tested it with a 4TB G-Raid. Two 7200rpm 2TB drives in raid 0 - and the speeds are 109MB/s write and 127MB/s read on a 1GB file. I believe those numbers to be in line with OWC's eSATA mod.

Im sure you can attain higher speeds using a SSD - 2 SSDs in raid 0 would probably max it out!

Here are some examples of the same test on other drives in my system:
I have an internal 100GB SSD in the optical bay 20% full - im getting 220MB/s write and 265MB/s read.
My internal 1TB main drive is 70% full, and im getting 70MB/s write and read.
My external 500GB USB is nearly full and those speeds are 36.7MB/s write and 38MB/s read.

Im using the eSATA connection for media editing, and it more than suits my needs - I could use firewire, but now I have options :)

Hope this helps -
Mark
 
Cool Mark. What bench test do you use? Check out my test. I am not sure how this compares to yours:

internal sata drive:

Results 70.55
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.4 (10F2056)
Physical RAM 12288 MB
Model iMac11,3
Drive Type WDC WD1001FALS-40Y6A0
Disk Test 70.55
Sequential 157.15
Uncached Write 156.22 95.91 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 156.60 88.60 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 135.92 39.78 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 188.38 94.68 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 45.49
Uncached Write 13.37 1.42 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 459.47 147.09 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 155.66 1.10 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 220.23 40.86 MB/sec [256K blocks]

external esata raid 0 (2 drives):


Results 57.56
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.4 (10F2056)
Physical RAM 12288 MB
Model iMac11,3
Drive Type eSATA-2 ExternalRAID
Disk Test 57.56
Sequential 206.35
Uncached Write 243.62 149.58 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 240.69 136.18 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 134.01 39.22 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 273.02 137.22 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 33.44
Uncached Write 11.19 1.18 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 89.30 28.59 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 78.45 0.56 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 158.67 29.44 MB/sec [256K blocks]
 
Benchtest

Hey imacmusic,
What a great system you have there! I'm jealous :)
I used the AJA Kona Benchmark test. A picture of my results are at www.xlr8yourmac.com - Sept. 24th.
Which test did you use? I'll try it and post my results for you.
-mark
 
Thanks, Mark. I used Xbench which is a free utility.

I have to report that I am not having success installing the OS on the RAID array. When I boot with the DVD it only gives me the option of choosing the MAC drive that came installed with the system. The esata drive is on at boot. Any suggestions?
 
imacmusic said:
Thanks, Mark. I used Xbench which is a free utility.

I have to report that I am not having success installing the OS on the RAID array. When I boot with the DVD it only gives me the option of choosing the MAC drive that came installed with the system. The esata drive is on at boot. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

The eSATA connection needs the drivers to work. When installing a new OS, it is unable to find the drive. I ran into the same kind of problem - I simply connected the drive using firewire to install the OS, then after it was completed, installed the raid drivers and switched the drive to eSATA and all was fine.

Im hoping your drive has multiple connections so it may work for you. Let us know. I'll run the Xbench utility and report my results.

-Mark
 
iMac eSATA Mod

Hey imacmusic,

Here are the results of my Xbench tests:

Internal SSD:

Results 351.92
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.4 (10F569)
Physical RAM 8192 MB
Model iMac9,1
Drive Type OCZ-VERTEX2
Disk Test 351.92
Sequential 213.44
Uncached Write 265.75 163.17 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 265.93 150.46 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 113.74 33.29 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 412.21 207.18 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 1002.08
Uncached Write 1285.55 136.09 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 496.19 158.85 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 3511.42 24.88 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 1094.52 203.10 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Internal SATA:

Results 98.12
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.4 (10F569)
Physical RAM 8192 MB
Model iMac9,1
Drive Type WDC WD1001FALS-40K1B0
Disk Test 98.12
Sequential 162.16
Uncached Write 173.58 106.58 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 165.71 93.76 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 123.33 36.09 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 209.95 105.52 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 70.34
Uncached Write 25.23 2.67 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 311.67 99.78 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 114.73 0.81 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 188.61 35.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]

External eSATA:

Results 70.84
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.4 (10F569)
Physical RAM 8192 MB
Model iMac9,1
Drive Type eSATA-2 ExternalRAID
Disk Test 70.84
Sequential 155.62
Uncached Write 209.07 128.37 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 202.00 114.29 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 85.83 25.12 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 231.49 116.35 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 45.86
Uncached Write 15.32 1.62 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 147.68 47.28 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 104.71 0.74 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 178.32 33.09 MB/sec [256K blocks]

The external drives seem to be in line with each other - some benchmarks were faster on yours (sequential writes and reads), and others were faster on mine (random writes and reads), but over all looks to perform about the same.
Check out the SSD! It rocks - I do recommend one of those!

-Mark
 
No Go!

:mad:

Hey Mark,

I have the mini pcie esata card in and it wont show in "about this mac - more info" under any category. I looked under "parallel scsi" as others suggested and i still cannot see it. I installed the raid drivers and still no go. i installed the non-raid and nothing. I reinstalled the airport card just to test wether the connection was good and it worked fine. i now either have a bad esata card or the new imac i7 cannot see this card. any suggestions?

BTW - My buddy ordered his esta card and should be receiving it this upcoming week. i plan to test his in my machine.
 
Why this esata 2 port bracket?

kram7211 said:
Hi,
I thought of installing with the LEDs, but 2 reasons stopped me.

1. I had no connectors inside the computer, so the LEDs wouldn't have lit up - they would just be decoration.

2. The LEDs themselves weren't the problem, it was their pins soldered to the bottom of the adapter that gave me problems - if I had not removed them, the board wouldn't sit flush on the aluminum case. They would poke through the mounting tape.

Hope this helps
Mark
Click to expand...

Hi Mark!
Thank you for posting your esata expansion project. I was looking for a long time to have esata ports on my new 21.5 i3 imac and this is the holy grail! I think you have got the best solution so far. thank you!

One big doubt though... Why did you use that specific 2 port bracket? Is there any technical reason for you not to choose a simple bracket without the board? ( like this one for example: http://cgi.ebay.es/2-Port-eSATA-Ext...nnectors_RL&hash=item5639d1cdbc#ht_1860wt_822)

Is it because that specific bracket supports raid connections? Or all of them work with raid connection? Was it an aesthetic/mounting option? (dual layer tape the board instead of using screws on the imac's lower cover plate)

How is the system working so far? any troubles with heat on the cabling or the dual layer tape holding the ports?

Sorry for the million questions, just trying to be sure of what hardware to buy before surgery on my mac. =)

fuz
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back