For me the issue is simply HFS+ corruption that results from just a simple reboot. I think with that it's just not worth bothering with anymore.
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E-sata Express card , which one actually works.
- Thread starter Guy Mancuso
- Start date
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Yes, same problems as before. If you transfer lots of data (over 20 to 40 gb) at high transfer speed the data will either get corrupted or you get a kernel panic at some random point. It's a lottery game, so nothing you'd like your data to rely on.
I'm trying to get Apple to look into this seriously for over a year now. Upto now they only tried to exchange the Logic Board of my MBP (even when I told them that others have the same problems) and now even exchanged my 15" late 2008 MBP with a 17" mid 2009 one.
It's worth mentioning that non eSATA ExpressCards also have problems and the irony is that with bootcamped Windows XP (9 year old OS from a competitor) it works flawless (not card hot-plugging though)! On Vista/W7 the ExpressCard slow still cannot be used.
Blame Apple for the situation!
eSATA ExpressCard AKE BC338 - Technical Review
Legend
I am using certain bullet point symbols:
+ means that a feature works correctly/positive.
- means that a feature works false or is not satisfying.
* a non-judgemental statement, such as a hint or remark.
Devices
Computer: Apple MacBookPro, 15 inch, Late 2006, MA609LL
Operating System: MacOS X 10.5.7
Boot-ROM: MBP22.00A5.B07 (EFI 1.4)
SMC-Version: 1.12f5
ExpressCard: AKE eSATA ExpressCard BC338
Store: http://stores.ebay.at/New-tech-G-four-Store-338
Dealer: http://myworld.ebay.at/nelson-338/
Price: Product 12.99 + International Shipping 0.99 = 13.98 USD (December 2009)
Mechanical features
+ The card fits into the bay via a spring mechanism.
- The eSATA cables don't latch in. The hold ordinarily, but for a (more or less system critical) external data link it could be more firm and secure! Note: This is not a card specific criticism, but towards eSATA in general.
- When the card is placed inside the bay it has about 2mm play on both sides. I applied some shaking force on the cable to the left and right, and the card moved accordingly, but it did not cause any loose or lost connection. Conclusion: Gave me an in-stable impression, but endured my test scenario.
* A certain strength is required to activate the push-out mechanism. Nevertheless don't apply too much pressure when inserting the cable, you could accidentally activate the spring mechanism. As the card is a hot-plug device anyway, you could simply take out the card, insert the cable when the card is outside of the bay, and then insert both at once.
* When plugging out the cable, hold the card with 1-2 fingers inside the bay, and unplug the cable with your other hand. Or simply pull the hot-plug card out of the bay, and only then unplug the cable.
Functional features
+ Booting from a device connected via the eSATA-ExpressCard worked natively.
+ Hot plugging works fine. No kernel panics or similar.
+ No data transfer corruption occurred in my tests (compared to other user's reviews). I copied a 4.3GB file and the command line tool "diff" did not show any data differences.
+ Energy saving works correctly. When the MacBookPro goes to sleep or unmounts the disk, then the disk spins down.
* Data transfer rate. Measured a duration of a 10GB transfer:
To an external Western Digital My Book hard disk through the eSATA port: Write 53.9 MB/sec, Read 38.6 MB/sec. Top of 70 MB/sec writing speed was reached once.
To a naked Toshiba MK5055GSX SATA Disk: Write 51.3 MB/sec, Read 43.5 MB/sec.
* Energy consumption. Not tested, as I don't know how to measure this.
- Flawed behavior in a long (3+ hours) permanent usage situation:
I started to sync my entire home directory to an external SATA disk, about 200GB distributed among many thousand files.
Sadly after about 20 minutes I witnessed a kernel crash! Until the crash occurred, 36GB in 100000 files were copied. My diff-comparison between original and copy showed that no data corruption occurred.
Summary: The card/driver panicked the kernel but until then all data was copied correctly.
The PanicReporter logfile showed:
My Google search, showed that other users experienced similar problems:
http://www.macosxaudio.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=367806
* No experiences concerning long (3+ months) time usage. Will possibly post experiences at a later time.
Summary
ExpressCard for a cheap price, with a nice shape as it does not protrude the MacBookPro's case, which is natively supported as it uses a JMicron JMB36x chipset.
Not useable in practice, as data-loss or kernel panics are in-acceptable!!!
Legend
I am using certain bullet point symbols:
+ means that a feature works correctly/positive.
- means that a feature works false or is not satisfying.
* a non-judgemental statement, such as a hint or remark.
Devices
Computer: Apple MacBookPro, 15 inch, Late 2006, MA609LL
Operating System: MacOS X 10.5.7
Boot-ROM: MBP22.00A5.B07 (EFI 1.4)
SMC-Version: 1.12f5
ExpressCard: AKE eSATA ExpressCard BC338
Store: http://stores.ebay.at/New-tech-G-four-Store-338
Dealer: http://myworld.ebay.at/nelson-338/
Price: Product 12.99 + International Shipping 0.99 = 13.98 USD (December 2009)
Mechanical features
+ The card fits into the bay via a spring mechanism.
- The eSATA cables don't latch in. The hold ordinarily, but for a (more or less system critical) external data link it could be more firm and secure! Note: This is not a card specific criticism, but towards eSATA in general.
- When the card is placed inside the bay it has about 2mm play on both sides. I applied some shaking force on the cable to the left and right, and the card moved accordingly, but it did not cause any loose or lost connection. Conclusion: Gave me an in-stable impression, but endured my test scenario.
* A certain strength is required to activate the push-out mechanism. Nevertheless don't apply too much pressure when inserting the cable, you could accidentally activate the spring mechanism. As the card is a hot-plug device anyway, you could simply take out the card, insert the cable when the card is outside of the bay, and then insert both at once.
* When plugging out the cable, hold the card with 1-2 fingers inside the bay, and unplug the cable with your other hand. Or simply pull the hot-plug card out of the bay, and only then unplug the cable.
Functional features
+ Booting from a device connected via the eSATA-ExpressCard worked natively.
+ Hot plugging works fine. No kernel panics or similar.
+ No data transfer corruption occurred in my tests (compared to other user's reviews). I copied a 4.3GB file and the command line tool "diff" did not show any data differences.
+ Energy saving works correctly. When the MacBookPro goes to sleep or unmounts the disk, then the disk spins down.
* Data transfer rate. Measured a duration of a 10GB transfer:
To an external Western Digital My Book hard disk through the eSATA port: Write 53.9 MB/sec, Read 38.6 MB/sec. Top of 70 MB/sec writing speed was reached once.
To a naked Toshiba MK5055GSX SATA Disk: Write 51.3 MB/sec, Read 43.5 MB/sec.
* Energy consumption. Not tested, as I don't know how to measure this.
- Flawed behavior in a long (3+ hours) permanent usage situation:
I started to sync my entire home directory to an external SATA disk, about 200GB distributed among many thousand files.
Sadly after about 20 minutes I witnessed a kernel crash! Until the crash occurred, 36GB in 100000 files were copied. My diff-comparison between original and copy showed that no data corruption occurred.
Summary: The card/driver panicked the kernel but until then all data was copied correctly.
The PanicReporter logfile showed:
Code:
panic(cpu 0 caller 0x00BD41D4): "AppleAHCI@ 0 HBA trouble accessing main memory = 0x20000000"@/SourceCache/AppleAHCI/AppleAHCI-160.1.4/AppleAHCIPort.cpp:1881
Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
[...]
Backtrace terminated-invalid frame pointer 0
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort(1.6.0)@0xbce000->0xbd9fff
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.6)@0x5da000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOAHCIFamily(1.5.0)@0xbc8000My Google search, showed that other users experienced similar problems:
http://www.macosxaudio.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=367806
* No experiences concerning long (3+ months) time usage. Will possibly post experiences at a later time.
Summary
ExpressCard for a cheap price, with a nice shape as it does not protrude the MacBookPro's case, which is natively supported as it uses a JMicron JMB36x chipset.
Not useable in practice, as data-loss or kernel panics are in-acceptable!!!
These are not "rumors" of data corruption. People are actually experiencing it with the card. Just because you didn't get corrupt data doesn't mean no one else will. I haven't had any data corruption yet, but I have had numerous kernel panics directly caused by the card (The crash report says it is an AHCI driver, and they always occur when using, inserting, or removing the card). Maybe you have a good card, or maybe yours hasn't gone bad yet, I don't know.
I think the mechanical problems are the fault of Apple's expresscard port. I hate the push-to-remove mechanism because just plugging in an eSATA cable can cause the card to pop out. It is hard to tell if I have inserted the cable all the way. I have a few eSATA cables, one of them i very loose in the card, and one of them is so tight that it is difficult to install or remove without removing the card.
If Apple would just add a combo eSATA/USB port like so many other "pro" machines out there, we wouldn't have any of these problems, and the expresscard slot would be freed up for other stuff.
I have completed my "long (3+ hours) time usage scenario", and it ended in a kernel panic!
Updated my review meanwhile. New summary: Card not useable!
Sadly eSATA on mobile Apple computers in 2010 is still unsatisfying!
jmicron esata
I've identified a serious flaw with the AKE BC338 esata cards under OS X - occasionally when writing they transpose adjacent 64 byte blocks. This is extremely reproducible, as shown by the following short script and its output (tested on two different cards, under 10.6.2):
As you can see by the output, it wrote the 16mb block to the device connected to the esata controller correctly some 144 times, and after that failed. The hexdump diff shows that the region 07c61c0-07c61ff has been exchanged with the region 07c6200-07c623f.
(edited)
It remains to be determined whether the issue is a driver or hardware problem. I understand that Mac OS uses its generic AHCI driver with these cards. I briefly tested one of the problematic cards in Linux on my Macbook Pro (SystemRescueCD 1.3.5) - the SATA driver refused to load. Perhaps these particular cards have an unusual quirky behaviour that works with certain permissive AHCI driver implementations, but blows up under others. I intend to test under Windows as well.
I've identified a serious flaw with the AKE BC338 esata cards under OS X - occasionally when writing they transpose adjacent 64 byte blocks. This is extremely reproducible, as shown by the following short script and its output (tested on two different cards, under 10.6.2):
Code:
beam:~/Desktop/test> dd if=/dev/random of=16m bs=16777216 count=1; hash=$(openssl sha1 < 16m); echo Correct hash is: $hash; while true; do dd if=16m bs=16777216 of=/dev/rdisk1s1 2>/dev/null; test=$(dd if=/dev/rdisk1s1 bs=16777216 count=1 2>/dev/null | openssl sha1); if [ $test != $hash ]; then echo Bad hash $test; break; else echo -n '.'; fi; done; dd if=/dev/rdisk1s1 bs=16777216 count=1 > badchunk; hexdump 16m > goodhex; hexdump badchunk > badhex; diff -U3 goodhex badhex
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
16777216 bytes transferred in 2.123851 secs (7899432 bytes/sec)
Correct hash is: 2f7ea117ac67b5dfcf18204e3048effa73d9d3d1
................................................................................................................................................Bad hash a09bbd61c38b99248b42f84ce9bddefaea659cb0
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
16777216 bytes transferred in 0.865953 secs (19374281 bytes/sec)
--- goodhex 2010-01-28 21:54:59.000000000 +1300
+++ badhex 2010-01-28 21:55:08.000000000 +1300
@@ -509466,14 +509466,14 @@
07c6190 70 26 23 9c e2 a9 a3 a2 1c 51 11 73 1d 68 b8 5b
07c61a0 f7 35 71 da 6c 90 0c af 00 00 e2 ce 51 a9 ee 2d
07c61b0 93 28 ca 0a 21 71 35 97 da 67 e1 b2 d2 11 eb f0
-07c61c0 16 a9 87 8e a0 f8 8f 72 38 be 71 e7 76 01 97 3a
-07c61d0 7f 7d 4e bc 51 b9 ff 99 a9 8e 93 74 04 07 71 2a
-07c61e0 30 3f 4d e1 3c e7 1c 26 b9 a7 7b 6d 64 fa f6 39
-07c61f0 19 75 89 ad 85 f2 7e bc 67 5e a0 a7 a5 13 7a 98
-07c6200 12 fa bf 57 41 3b b1 2b 52 80 d7 b7 a4 2f aa cb
-07c6210 3e bc 2f 61 d8 44 fb 23 cb f7 fd ad 49 75 4d 83
-07c6220 43 c6 f9 fd 97 a8 87 a0 c7 38 14 97 73 2e ea 35
-07c6230 16 24 ca 74 ba 67 28 27 ba 56 39 5e 23 4b 21 49
+07c61c0 12 fa bf 57 41 3b b1 2b 52 80 d7 b7 a4 2f aa cb
+07c61d0 3e bc 2f 61 d8 44 fb 23 cb f7 fd ad 49 75 4d 83
+07c61e0 43 c6 f9 fd 97 a8 87 a0 c7 38 14 97 73 2e ea 35
+07c61f0 16 24 ca 74 ba 67 28 27 ba 56 39 5e 23 4b 21 49
+07c6200 16 a9 87 8e a0 f8 8f 72 38 be 71 e7 76 01 97 3a
+07c6210 7f 7d 4e bc 51 b9 ff 99 a9 8e 93 74 04 07 71 2a
+07c6220 30 3f 4d e1 3c e7 1c 26 b9 a7 7b 6d 64 fa f6 39
+07c6230 19 75 89 ad 85 f2 7e bc 67 5e a0 a7 a5 13 7a 98
07c6240 e4 6f ed bb 42 db 51 fa d4 0a 72 c3 08 30 83 98
07c6250 75 e7 68 a3 22 23 35 c3 f7 6a 71 f1 c2 fe 37 fc
07c6260 60 2d 89 61 06 17 c7 21 30 94 89 c8 86 6b c3 9bAs you can see by the output, it wrote the 16mb block to the device connected to the esata controller correctly some 144 times, and after that failed. The hexdump diff shows that the region 07c61c0-07c61ff has been exchanged with the region 07c6200-07c623f.
(edited)
It remains to be determined whether the issue is a driver or hardware problem. I understand that Mac OS uses its generic AHCI driver with these cards. I briefly tested one of the problematic cards in Linux on my Macbook Pro (SystemRescueCD 1.3.5) - the SATA driver refused to load. Perhaps these particular cards have an unusual quirky behaviour that works with certain permissive AHCI driver implementations, but blows up under others. I intend to test under Windows as well.
Bought a AKE BC338 card a few minutes ago, after reading the first few pages....then returned to read the rest of the thread...DOH.
Ah well, 13 bucks for a weekend of trouble-shooting, testing and KPing is a pretty good deal, especially with the economy and all. (I really need better hobbies)
Ah well, 13 bucks for a weekend of trouble-shooting, testing and KPing is a pretty good deal, especially with the economy and all. (I really need better hobbies)
It's really not that bad, if you are careful.
-Save all work before inserting card (I've had a few instant KPs)
-Reboot after inserting card
-Don't use it for long periods at a time
Even if you take precautions, be prepared for a KP any time while using the card.
You would have to test this with another Jmicron based card in order to find out if you just made the OS X driver bug visible that haunts all JMicron based cards or if it is a specific BC338 issue.
Another possibility would be to use any Windows based laptop (or bootcamped XP). My experience is that other Jmicron based cards fail only on OS X while running error free on any Windows laptop (or XP on Bootcamp). My BC338 on the other hand produced errors on any setup.
I'm trying to get Apple to recognize this bug for over a year now, but upto now their support has been less than stellar. They even replaced the logic board of my 15" MBP and then replaced the 15" MBP 2008 with a 17" MBP 2009 because they are too stupid to finally have a *real* engineer look into the issues (there are other issues with ExpressCard, too).
My first report about write errors by the OS X driver was from 04/19/09. I don't remember which version of OS X was current back then, but I think I startet with 10.5.6 when I bought the MBP.
I have to stress that the same Jmicron based card does not produce any errors or crashes when using bootcamped Windows XP (which is a very unfunny irony). Still no ExpressCard support for bootcamped Vista/W7 btw (another very unfunny thing)!
I have to stress that the same Jmicron based card does not produce any errors or crashes when using bootcamped Windows XP (which is a very unfunny irony). Still no ExpressCard support for bootcamped Vista/W7 btw (another very unfunny thing)!
I got my BC338 on 3/17/09. I don't know for sure that my other Jmicron card was error-free before that; I can't remember how much I used it. It would be a bit more work to find out when I bought the Jmicron card.
PPA International 2-port eSATA card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812150044
PPA International 2-port eSATA card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812150044
I'd be very interested if someone who has a non-BC338 JMicron based expresscard could run the script I pasted above for about half an hour and see if it shows any errors in that time. As Timur suggested, this could help identify whether the issues we've experienced are an incompatibility between the JMicron chipset and Apple's generic AHCI driver.
Note that the script needs to write to the raw disk device (/dev/rdiskXsY) to avoid invalidating the results with disk cache, so should not be run against a drive with valuable data on it)
Note that the script needs to write to the raw disk device (/dev/rdiskXsY) to avoid invalidating the results with disk cache, so should not be run against a drive with valuable data on it)
I just noticed this on the Sonnet website:
I checked the chip in my USB/eSATA enclosure, and it appears to be made by Initio. I've never heard of them, but the enclosure is a cheap Azio enclosure. Enclosures based on the JMicron 20366 such as the OWC Mercury On-the-Go USB 2.0/eSATA 2.5" portable are specifically listed as compatible.
The Sonnet Tempo Edge card fits flush in the slot and only costs $50. It appears to max out at 125MB/sec read and 110MB/sec write, but that's not much slower than my disk and is still a lot faster than Firewire 800 (and cheaper than a FW800 enclosure). If it works without risk of a KP, it would be worth it.
http://www.sonnettech.com/PRODUCT/temposataedgeexpress34.html
Has anyone tried this card?
If the next refresh of MBPs don't offer anything better for fast disk access, I will probably buy the Sonnet card.
Edit: My portable Rosewill eSATA/USB enclosure (2.5") has a JM20336 controller.
I checked the chip in my USB/eSATA enclosure, and it appears to be made by Initio. I've never heard of them, but the enclosure is a cheap Azio enclosure. Enclosures based on the JMicron 20366 such as the OWC Mercury On-the-Go USB 2.0/eSATA 2.5" portable are specifically listed as compatible.
The Sonnet Tempo Edge card fits flush in the slot and only costs $50. It appears to max out at 125MB/sec read and 110MB/sec write, but that's not much slower than my disk and is still a lot faster than Firewire 800 (and cheaper than a FW800 enclosure). If it works without risk of a KP, it would be worth it.
http://www.sonnettech.com/PRODUCT/temposataedgeexpress34.html
Has anyone tried this card?
If the next refresh of MBPs don't offer anything better for fast disk access, I will probably buy the Sonnet card.
Edit: My portable Rosewill eSATA/USB enclosure (2.5") has a JM20336 controller.
The new Macbooks are out and the 17" model still offers an expresscard slot. Apple *advertises* that the slot could be used for eSATA.
I did not hear back from Apple since 5 months, their exchange service does not answer any of my mails. Today I will try a round of phone-calls to both Apple and the company I bought the MBP from.
The Sonnet card seems to be based on the Silicon Image chipset judging from the driver download section at Sonnet. So the results will likely be the very same as with any SIL based card.
I did not hear back from Apple since 5 months, their exchange service does not answer any of my mails. Today I will try a round of phone-calls to both Apple and the company I bought the MBP from.
My three enclosures (1x Macpower, 2x Onnto) are based on the Oxford 934 chipset. Anyway this means nothing, because I tried to use the harddrives *directly* via eSATA-SATA cable and it made no difference. Also the very same enclosures worked with the very same eSATA card on bootcamped Windows XP and on a Vista based laptop without data corruption.
The Sonnet card seems to be based on the Silicon Image chipset judging from the driver download section at Sonnet. So the results will likely be the very same as with any SIL based card.
Hi all,
I just bought this JMicron JMB360 eSATA - expresscard and so far it's working great. I use it to boot from my external drive on my MacBook Pro Cor 2 duo, running 10.6.3.
I ran XBench to compare this eSATA connection with FW800. When booted from eSATA the disk test gives me a score of 102.79 while booting from the same disk connected with FW800 I get 78.68, this is a significant difference to me.
Hope this information can be of any help to anybody.
I just bought this JMicron JMB360 eSATA - expresscard and so far it's working great. I use it to boot from my external drive on my MacBook Pro Cor 2 duo, running 10.6.3.
I ran XBench to compare this eSATA connection with FW800. When booted from eSATA the disk test gives me a score of 102.79 while booting from the same disk connected with FW800 I get 78.68, this is a significant difference to me.
Hope this information can be of any help to anybody.
Will the OWC JMicron card stand the test of time?
Dafke, I'm glad to hear the OWC eSata ExpressCard/34 works great for you. It certainly was priced reasonably at US$19.
However, you just bought this card and so far it is working great. I am skeptical, because I have an eSata ExpressCard/34 that worked well for about two months, then stopped working. It returned to working for a period of about a week, then stopped working completely.
Would you, therefore, do me a favor? Write a note in your calendar or tickler file to remind you to post an update on this forum on July 23rd. In the update, please inform us how heavily you have been using the card over the two months from the date of your earlier post and whether it has performed flawlessly.
Thanks,
Dafke, I'm glad to hear the OWC eSata ExpressCard/34 works great for you. It certainly was priced reasonably at US$19.
However, you just bought this card and so far it is working great. I am skeptical, because I have an eSata ExpressCard/34 that worked well for about two months, then stopped working. It returned to working for a period of about a week, then stopped working completely.
Would you, therefore, do me a favor? Write a note in your calendar or tickler file to remind you to post an update on this forum on July 23rd. In the update, please inform us how heavily you have been using the card over the two months from the date of your earlier post and whether it has performed flawlessly.
Thanks,
I just received this same card from OWC. I ran XBench to test the speeds and it is the same via esata as USB. How did you get such fast speeds?
What kind of disk are you using? If it's a slow disk, eSATA won't make it any faster. For example, my old 200GB 5400RPM disk is about the same on eSATA an USB, but my 1TB 7200RPM disks are much faster (at least 3x for sequential operations) on eSATA.
I recently used my eSATA card to do a complete backup of my desktop PC over the network with no crashes or KPs. I shard the desktop's C: drive and pointed my MBP to it, then I used either CP or DD (I can't remember) to copy everything to my 1TB drive on eSATA since it is HFS+. I was surprised at how well the network backup worked, and even if the copy isn't bootable, all my data is there at least.
Yea nevermind. I tested my old internal hard drive that I switched that came with my macbook pro. I received my Samsung Spinpoint 7200rpm and my speeds are much faster with esata than usb. Thanks
What external case are you using and have you had any KP's or other problems yet?
thanks
JohnG
The enclosures are not the source of the Kernel Panic and data corruption problems. I had these happen even with a ESATA-to-SATA cable directly connected to the drive.
To the people "successfuly" using their cards: What Macbook model are we talking about (2008/2009 or 2010)? Could you try a full image/clone of your internal drive to an external one (should be at least 40-80 gb data) and then run a check of the clone via OS X' Disk Utility?
To the people "successfuly" using their cards: What Macbook model are we talking about (2008/2009 or 2010)? Could you try a full image/clone of your internal drive to an external one (should be at least 40-80 gb data) and then run a check of the clone via OS X' Disk Utility?