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Any USB 3.0 Cards Coming Soon?
- Thread starter simplymuzik3
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They will start selling the USB 3.0 card by itself with mac drivers, in a week or 2 from their site and I couldn't be happier!!!
They are also coming out with a usb/esata card for mac (assuming you can get to a free sata plug inside your mac pro)
Given what's happened with CalDigit products in the past (not that long ago), I'd stay away from anything they sell.
Types of issues seen:
- It doesn't work well.
- They don't design any of it, so don't know how to support it.
- Drop support suddenly, even though stated that support would be available for some period of time.
If you're curious as to the particulars, do a search... you'll find it (specifics are there).
It may come down to a 3rd party vendor, such as Highpoint (i.e. get cards made with NEC's chips, and either develop drivers themselves, or have it done by a contractor).
CalDigit USB 3.0 Card and AV Driver Review
Nanofrog,
As you properly noticed that I am an Apple consultant and did sell a lot of CalDigit products before. I do agree with your statement.
Regarding to USB 3.0 card for Mac, their card will fail and in fact, I talk to my friend in BlackMagic Design who's doing the testing and validation.
He said, CalDigit's USB card is not working and very unstable.
AGAIN, why caldigit launch their USB 3.0 card and the AV Drive that is not ready?
We are not beta testers and we should find a way to prevent this problem.
Here is the list of their Epic failure products.
1. S2VR Duo
2. S2VR HD
3. FireWire VR
All three item were heavily promoted and soon dropped out.
Their FASTA-4E card is using Silicon image 3124 chipset which is a software RAID but CalDigit claimed it is a hardware RAID.
The RAID failed beyond all repair.
Then they have HDPro which CalDigit claimed SAN ready. As of TODAY, it is not. and I guess anyone can use a SAN software to make a DAS SAN ready.
WHAT A BOGUS!!!
After they launch HD Element and it's RAID Card.
They did not tell customer that the RAID Card is only compatible with CalDigit's storage.
Seriously, I think this company is full of ************* and not a honest company.
Wait a minute...I saw a lot of positive review from CalDigit's Website!!!
Please call and verify and ask those reviewers for more details.
Ask them how many time CalDigit replaced the review unit and did those reviewers pay for the product?
In compares to Sonnet which is not a real manufacture but at least keep its promise.
I think Sonnet at least don't lie to its customers.
Also their testing benchmark is so untrue.
Their website says 800+ MB/s
The reviewer Caldigit bought says
"As you can see, the HDPro2 delivered an average write speed of 673.8 MB/s and an average read speed of 709.5 MB/s.
"
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/weiss_roth_david/caldigit-hdpro2.php
CalDigit = SCAM is my conclusion.
Am I being too harsh.. NO.. I lost my credibility selling their *****. I lost a lot of clients because their ***** does not work. I lost a lot of clients because Caldigit never deliver their *****.
FxxK Caldigit.
Nanofrog,
As you properly noticed that I am an Apple consultant and did sell a lot of CalDigit products before. I do agree with your statement.
Regarding to USB 3.0 card for Mac, their card will fail and in fact, I talk to my friend in BlackMagic Design who's doing the testing and validation.
He said, CalDigit's USB card is not working and very unstable.
AGAIN, why caldigit launch their USB 3.0 card and the AV Drive that is not ready?
We are not beta testers and we should find a way to prevent this problem.
Here is the list of their Epic failure products.
1. S2VR Duo
2. S2VR HD
3. FireWire VR
All three item were heavily promoted and soon dropped out.
Their FASTA-4E card is using Silicon image 3124 chipset which is a software RAID but CalDigit claimed it is a hardware RAID.
The RAID failed beyond all repair.
Then they have HDPro which CalDigit claimed SAN ready. As of TODAY, it is not. and I guess anyone can use a SAN software to make a DAS SAN ready.
WHAT A BOGUS!!!
After they launch HD Element and it's RAID Card.
They did not tell customer that the RAID Card is only compatible with CalDigit's storage.
Seriously, I think this company is full of ************* and not a honest company.
Wait a minute...I saw a lot of positive review from CalDigit's Website!!!
Please call and verify and ask those reviewers for more details.
Ask them how many time CalDigit replaced the review unit and did those reviewers pay for the product?
In compares to Sonnet which is not a real manufacture but at least keep its promise.
I think Sonnet at least don't lie to its customers.
Also their testing benchmark is so untrue.
Their website says 800+ MB/s
The reviewer Caldigit bought says
"As you can see, the HDPro2 delivered an average write speed of 673.8 MB/s and an average read speed of 709.5 MB/s.
"
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/weiss_roth_david/caldigit-hdpro2.php
CalDigit = SCAM is my conclusion.
Am I being too harsh.. NO.. I lost my credibility selling their *****. I lost a lot of clients because their ***** does not work. I lost a lot of clients because Caldigit never deliver their *****.
FxxK Caldigit.
I remember, and am glad you decided to post on their junk-ware (down to the false promises, etc...).
Unfortunately, they do seem to think it's acceptable to use early buyers as beta testers (without any advance knowledge). Only after they get their hands on the product/s, do they discover this. Really bad business for such products. RAID isn't something you play games with.
I wish the CalDigit RAID Card and HDElement would be added to the discontinued section, but they're still selling them. Consumer disks in the HDElement... they're insane if they think that's sufficient.
The HDElement is another pile of junk. They tied it to the card for no other reason than greed.
Initially, they indicated that they would have both filled and empty versions (no disks), so customers could spec out what they wanted. Vapor.
As per the reviews, they just didn't post the rest that berated the crap out of this stuff.
Both rely on ODM's for their products. But CalDigit doesn't properly perform validation testing. At this point, I'm not sure they know how, and certain they don't care (too many instances of products released to the public in a beta state).
Another one that I'm not all that confident with overall, is Highpoint. They're another company that uses ODM suppliers, and have had mixed results over thier lines. Some I'd use, such as the RR43xx series in a PC (made by Areca). Because they don't design or make anything they sell, their support side rather sucks (quite problematic for those that are unfamiliar with what they've bought).
I've never used Sonnet myself, but don't recall seeing much for negative comments either.
The sad thing is, that review glowed about the product. However, I suspect the unit was lent/given to the reviewer, and the testing was not long term.
I certainly don't blame you here, as your business was damaged due to their products (as you say, you placed your reputation on their products).
The only way I can think of to really protect yourself from this happening again, is to get a product you're considering, and perform your own extensive, long term testing on it. Not an ideal prospect (takes time, and clients want solutions yesterday), but it's better than the repeat you had with CalDigit (blind trust in what the sales dept. promises).
At least Cal is trying. Can't say that for most others including Apple. I hope soon a major USB3 controller vendor will write some working osx drivers. There is a market for this if someone picks up on it. I think the more usb 3.0 drives that come out, the better chance of a decent controller card.
yes and no. Apple already has eSATA, why bother with another new interface USB 3? besides, you dont need to pay anything for an additional card, apple mac pro comes with one or two extra internal sata ports, you will be able to re-route it to external port easily. i am always questioning about the real benefit of USB 3. so far, i see none comparing with SATA.
You can buy $50 USB 3 cards and stick them in any PC.
A photography website tested transfer times for thousands
of large RAW files. The USB 3 system took 1/5 the time
as the USB 2 system.
Your lame apologetic for outdated I/O on premium hardware is vaporware.
Not every box has an esata port to share and usb 3 is backwards compatible so I see it being quite useful for now. Trust me usb 3.0 devices of many sorts will be widespread before lightspeed sees the light of day. I wish that were not the case, but I'm afraid it will be the case.
By the way, are the 2009 extra sata ports accessible, or are they hidden under stuff like the 2008 Mac pro?
I remember, and am glad you decided to post on their junk-ware (down to the false promises, etc...).
Unfortunately, they do seem to think it's acceptable to use early buyers as beta testers (without any advance knowledge). Only after they get their hands on the product/s, do they discover this. Really bad business for such products. RAID isn't something you play games with.
I wish the CalDigit RAID Card and HDElement would be added to the discontinued section, but they're still selling them. Consumer disks in the HDElement... they're insane if they think that's sufficient.
The HDElement is another pile of junk. They tied it to the card for no other reason than greed.
Initially, they indicated that they would have both filled and empty versions (no disks), so customers could spec out what they wanted. Vapor.
As per the reviews, they just didn't post the rest that berated the crap out of this stuff.
Both rely on ODM's for their products. But CalDigit doesn't properly perform validation testing. At this point, I'm not sure they know how, and certain they don't care (too many instances of products released to the public in a beta state).
Another one that I'm not all that confident with overall, is Highpoint. They're another company that uses ODM suppliers, and have had mixed results over thier lines. Some I'd use, such as the RR43xx series in a PC (made by Areca). Because they don't design or make anything they sell, their support side rather sucks (quite problematic for those that are unfamiliar with what they've bought).
I've never used Sonnet myself, but don't recall seeing much for negative comments either.
The sad thing is, that review glowed about the product. However, I suspect the unit was lent/given to the reviewer, and the testing was not long term.
I certainly don't blame you here, as your business was damaged due to their products (as you say, you placed your reputation on their products).
The only way I can think of to really protect yourself from this happening again, is to get a product you're considering, and perform your own extensive, long term testing on it. Not an ideal prospect (takes time, and clients want solutions yesterday), but it's better than the repeat you had with CalDigit (blind trust in what the sales dept. promises).
HIGH POINT, OH my God.. another CalDigit like company but a little bit better.
I discuss with their engineers about their 2314 card at NAB 2010.
Told them how poor the support is and the RAID drop itself.
Different engineer told me different story.
One said, we sell to G-Tech and they don't have problem. Maybe your enclosure is not compatible? Wait a minute, I use ProAVIO, Stardom, RAIDSTREAM, and Sonnet enclosures. Every single one of them got problem with 2314 card.
I then got really pissed that I almost rip off that engineer's liver.
I then talk to another engineer, he said their engineer cannot do anything about it. They know the problem but there is no fix.
Intel is not supporting USB 3.0 but will next year.
AMD is support it.
NEC was the only USB 3.0 chipset manufacture and they are releasing USB 3.0 driver for Mac in few weeks.
Hang tight folks, we will get a USB card for cheap very soon.
I am wondering if anyone has done the code transfer from linux USB 3.0 driver to Mac OSX. It should be pretty easy job. A linux geek can do it in 3 to 4 weeks easily.
The 2314 is one such product I wouldn't touch for RAID, as it's a Fake RAID controller. I'd maybe try it for single disk, or JBOD implementations (0/1 would also be possible), but certainly not level 5 (never used this card, so would test the crap out of it first if meant for clients).
BTW, what were you trying to do with it?
Anyone that tries to run a parity set (RAID 5) on it is begging to be burnt, as it can't deal with the write hole associated with parity based arrays. A UPS will help, but it's not foolproof (mainly due to recovery capabilities aren't sufficient; no NVRAM = no backup of the partition tables in the ROM, ... ).
Yeah, Intel decided to delay USB 3.0 support in their chipsets. The only logical explaination is that they're trying to delay it in order to help out their own LightPeak interconnect.
But it will come as part of the chipset, no matter what happens with LP.
Did you get it when it first came out, or much later?
I ask, as most of their initial releases mean the product is only in a Beta state. So users become product testers.
Assuming they finally get it straightened out, waiting can eliminate problems. But it's ultimately a gamble IMO, as products released like that may not be fixable (no amount of firmware or driver work can fix it if it's a bad design).
NOT something I consider acceptable with RAID products.
Single disk enclosures would be less critical (such as the USB 3.0 unit that started this thread), but still annoying as the user may end up paying return shipping and restocking fees for a bad product = NO fault of the user.
One problem with USB 3 cards is they're speed-limited by the PCIe bus. I have a USB 3 card in my Dell (see sig), and while it works perfectly it's only about 2x as fast as USB 2. So until we have it integrated into chipsets or motherboards, we'll never realize its full potential.
Unfortunately, this is correct.
Either newer chips are needed (the current limitation you're experiencing is a result as to how the NEC chip was designed), or via the chipset when they arrive.
you can do that easily but you have to follow and not to violate the GNU General Public License.
No, it is in part kneecapped because the southbridge chipsets have limited PCI-e I/O and the northbrige (or main PCI-e expansion providers) are over subscribed. This is what typically happens when pump the data from the Renesas/NEC chip through PCI-e v1.0 instead of v2.0 .
Even integrated onto motherboards there are cap. Extremely few currently want to "blow" two PCI-e v2.0 channels on it. Short term it is probably a reasonable trade-off as many hard drives can't saturate it and SSDs are a bit too expensive to become mainstream. For what lots of folks were using eSATA for it will work "good enough" , but will be plug-and-play.
When the Northbridge commonly go to PCI-e v.3 coupled with the southbridge (and possibly updated ExpressCard 2.0 ) dole out PCI-e v2.0 lanes then can meet potential without necessarily being incorporated into chipset.
Even integrating into chipsets has same "resistance" to spending multiple channels on USB . I think Intel is waiting till there is "extra" bandwidth headroom in chipset to put it in. Plus it is bulky because have to keep all the old USB 2.0 stuff for compatibility and build a second USB 3.0 engine.
I really don't get it, why are people so interested in USB 3.0
I'm far more interested in Intel LightPeak
if you don't know what LightPeak is here is a little video, and their using macs to show it off, so i guarantee you it will be compatible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khPx1dEIPnA
I'm far more interested in Intel LightPeak
if you don't know what LightPeak is here is a little video, and their using macs to show it off, so i guarantee you it will be compatible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khPx1dEIPnA
I really don't get it, why are people so interested in USB 3.0
I'm far more interested in Intel LightPeak
if you don't know what LightPeak is here is a little video, and their using macs to show it off, so i guarantee you it will be compatible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khPx1dEIPnA
Because USB 3.0 is here... right now... available off the shelves. While lightpeak is sitting in a development lab.
And lightpeak appearing on a PCIe expansion slot is pointless.
Therefore, as things stand right now USB 3.0 > Lightpeak.
I have yet to see any USB 3.0 capable device. and according to intel it is in its final stages and will be available late 2010 early 2011
and what difference does that make at this point, no macs ship with USB 3.0 so your gonna need a PCIe card for that too?
External Seagate Go Flex drives - can get docking adapter with USB 3.0.... just to name one.
So while no macs ship with USB 3.0, there are PCIe cards out there... and devices that use it.