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Need advice about Express card/34 drive options

N

Numfar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 25, 2009
4
0
I have a new 17 inch macbook pro due any day, and was wondering if there is a performance advantage to be gained using software like Photoshop by installing a drive into the expresscard slot and setting it up as a scratch disk?

If so, what is the best option (regarding reliability and speed)?

Is it better to go with the largest capacity drive, or is there a speed advantage with a smaller options (as with CF cards?)

Cost isn't a concern, as my company will be covering the expense, and I've got the greenlight to build the best machine available.

Thanks in advance,

B
 
OP i wanted to do the same also. Not sure if its going to make a difference. Jaro65 pointed me to this drive at newegg. Reads up to 115MB/s and Writes up to 65MB/s. He said it can get a little toasty though.

Any other reviews on expresscard SSDs?
 
So if not a drive bay, what is the best use for that slot? I have an SD card reader which slides in nicely, but rarely need that after switching to Nikon cameras.

A firewire 800 dual port addition can sometimes be useful, but it sticks out terribly.

Is it likely to see a USB 3.0 port be able to be added there?

How about USB2.0?

Other options?

B
 
Numfar said:
So if not a drive bay, what is the best use for that slot? I have an SD card reader which slides in nicely, but rarely need that after switching to Nikon cameras.

A firewire 800 dual port addition can sometimes be useful, but it sticks out terribly.

Is it likely to see a USB 3.0 port be able to be added there?

How about USB2.0?

Other options?

B
Click to expand...

maybe an esata port? to get the most performance out of the hard drives connected externally? ;)
 
USB 3.0 Expresscard hosts are already out the gate.

The problem is that they don't support OS X.

An e-sata host will be your best bet as far as usability.

You can get an SSD that'll be hooked into the PCI-E bus rather than the USB bus but that'll be at a premium.
 
DoFoT9 said:
maybe an esata port? to get the most performance out of the hard drives connected externally? ;)
Click to expand...

Apparently, this is not currently reliable -- poking around turns up various threads about problems with basically all known supported eSATA cards. In particular, the Sonnet one, which is otherwise pretty decent, doesn't work with the very common Oxford 931 chipset -- I don't have any eSATA devices using anything else, so I can't say whether it works with other things, although Sonnet says it does.
 
therealseebs said:
Apparently, this is not currently reliable -- poking around turns up various threads about problems with basically all known supported eSATA cards. In particular, the Sonnet one, which is otherwise pretty decent, doesn't work with the very common Oxford 931 chipset -- I don't have any eSATA devices using anything else, so I can't say whether it works with other things, although Sonnet says it does.
Click to expand...

hmm interesting. i remember reading about it (there is a thread on here actually) - but i presumed SL fixed it. clearly not.
 
The there are two flavors of the Sonnet card out. The Professional strength model, for the price, shouldn't have any issues, but I don't have one :/

link
 
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