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Are there any PCIe eSATA cards that run with OSX 10.6.2?

The only card that works with 64bit kernel is newertech one. It doesn't use drivers so it works with SL K64. And it supports 6 GB/s.

But you cannot boot from the esata drives. That's the only downside.
 
iBug2 said:
The only card that works with 64bit kernel is newertech one. It doesn't use drivers so it works with SL K64. And it supports 6 GB/s.

But you cannot boot from the esata drives. That's the only downside.
Click to expand...
K64 support is in the drivers, just as it is in Windows and Linux. The newertech unit works because it's using the K64 drivers included in OS X (same for K32; it only depends on which Kernel the user loads, assuming the system can run K64 = '08 and newer MP's).

Other cards do work with K64 (some advertise it, others don't). FirmTek's 4 port card for example, advertises that it works with K64 and K32. As I understand it, Silicon Image's drivers also have both the 32 and 64 bit variants included in a single driver file (you may need to load it twice if both Kernels are used as you would with any other OS; once per Kernel).
 
nanofrog said:
K64 support is in the drivers, just as it is in Windows and Linux. The newertech unit works because it's using the K64 drivers included in OS X (same for K32; it only depends on which Kernel the user loads, assuming the system can run K64 = '08 and newer MP's).

Other cards do work with K64 (some advertise it, others don't). FirmTek's 4 port card for example, advertises that it works with K64 and K32. As I understand it, Silicon Image's drivers also have both the 32 and 64 bit variants included in a single driver file (you may need to load it twice if both Kernels are used as you would with any other OS; once per Kernel).
Click to expand...

Silicon image does not work with K64. I have a SIL based card and it does not work with K64, tried every driver out there.
 
iBug2 said:
Silicon image does not work with K64. I have a SIL based card and it does not work with K64, tried every driver out there.
Click to expand...
I was under the impression they had with the latest drivers. Good to know, so thanks. :)
 
Transporteur said:
I didn't try 10.6.2 because of some serious RAID issues of this release, but it would be nice if you could keep us up to date. :)
Click to expand...

I know it's a late reply, but that's because it's only been in the last hour that i've installed the cheap SIL 3132 card that i bought from Hong Kong on eBay ... and running 10.6.2 i've had no joy. Tried the SIL driver and also the sonnet driver, but neither worked.
I'm giving up on that and going back to use my HighPoint 2314 as a JBOD eSATA driver.
Cheers
 
iBug2 said:
But it seems they released some new beta drivers. Should check those out, maybe they'll work with K64.
Click to expand...
I presumed that you were using the latest drivers at the time. And they will continue to be updated as well, which means re-testing with each release. :rolleyes: :p
 
1.2.3.0 driver (released 1/28/2010) from Silicon Image

Yes, I have gotten that NON-RAID to work just fine with my 08 mac pro with 10.6.2. I am using a port multiplier to run 5 drives externally going via eSata into the SiI 3132 PCI Express controller card.

The raid 5 will not work with 10.6.2. Period. If you try, you will be plagued with hard crashes until you give up.

The periods of time where i have gotten the raid 5 up for a bit look great. The raid will automatically rebuild itself after a crash, and swapping out a dead drive for a new one is easy too. I was using 5x1.5TB seagates and it said it would take a day to rebuild after replacing a drive. This showed no increase in CPU usage.

A rebuild after a crash took anywhere from 5-15 minutes.

Through the PM with 5 drives in a raid 5, i was getting 10-20MB/s speeds.

The max raid array size is 5 drives. You can have 2 arrays of 5 drives with 2 PM's.

Hope this helps,

Andy
 
NEUengineer said:
Yes, I have gotten that NON-RAID to work just fine with my 08 mac pro with 10.6.2. I am using a port multiplier to run 5 drives externally going via eSata into the SiI 3132 PCI Express controller card.

The raid 5 will not work with 10.6.2. Period. If you try, you will be plagued with hard crashes until you give up.

The periods of time where i have gotten the raid 5 up for a bit look great. The raid will automatically rebuild itself after a crash, and swapping out a dead drive for a new one is easy too. I was using 5x1.5TB seagates and it said it would take a day to rebuild after replacing a drive. This showed no increase in CPU usage.

A rebuild after a crash took anywhere from 5-15 minutes.

Through the PM with 5 drives in a raid 5, i was getting 10-20MB/s speeds.

The max raid array size is 5 drives. You can have 2 arrays of 5 drives with 2 PM's.

Hope this helps,

Andy
Click to expand...
You shouldn't use cards like this for parity based arrays (5/6/50/60), as they're not capable of handling the write hole issue associated with such arrays (even if it was stable for you).

The SIL3132's RAID functions are software based, and have no additional hardware (processor + cache = NVRAM solution to the write hole). You also need a UPS for this.

0/1/10 and JBOD however, is just fine (can use the Non RAID drivers, and implement RAID functions through Disk Utility). :)
 
Hi Folks,

This seems to be a good thread to ask my question :)

I bought the lacie PCI-E 2E esata (2 port) card. Installed the latest drivers from Lacie's site, it comes up in system profiler under PCI as other mass storage controller.

I'm on 10.6.4 on my 2009 mac pro.

BUT, whether I connect my Mediasonic ProRaid box (which has 8 TBs (4 x 2TBs) in Raid 10 (so it shows up as 1 3.8 TB drive) or my external sata case (which has 1 HD), nothing shows up on my desktop nor in disk utilities.

If i connect either drive via FW800, they come up and are good to go.

Any ideas? I thought maybe the card is a bust for RAID'ed drives, but the other drive should work.

Cheers,
Keebler
 
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