TB to eSATA Lacie Hub

[Sean Dempsey]

Is this full legit SATA speeds just like internal drives? I am running 2 FW800 external drives in daisy chain, and it's way too slow obv. Painful.

I have a mid 2011 iMac with TB, so I should be okay with that right regarding full speeds yes?

with an iMac and no nPM yet, I am gonna need it regardless for these eSATA externals. Oh I should say, the externals are brand new OWC Mercury Elite pro enclosures with WD Black drives in them.

And I assume that SSD's perform at full speed on eSATA->TB.

 

[xraydoc]

I have one. I get about 240MB/sec out of each eSATA port.

I have an OWC Qx2 connected to each of the two eSATA ports. Each Qx2 is configured to a hardware RAID mode (one as a 4-drive RAID 0 stripe, the other as RAID 10 - two two-drive RAID 0's mirroring each other).

I do not believe the LaCie eSATA hub fully supports port multiplier devices, so make sure each device you plug in to each eSATA port presents itself as a single volume and not as multiple volumes.

But other than the limitation above, it works quite well.

For maximum speed, I'd suggest putting a drive on each eSATA channel and stripe the two together with Apple's disk utility.

 

[Sean Dempsey]

I have one. I get about 240MB/sec out of each eSATA port.

I have an OWC Qx2 connected to each of the two eSATA ports. Each Qx2 is configured to a hardware RAID mode (one as a 4-drive RAID 0 stripe, the other as RAID 10 - two two-drive RAID 0's mirroring each other).

I do not believe the LaCie eSATA hub fully supports port multiplier devices, so make sure each device you plug in to each eSATA port presents itself as a single volume and not as multiple volumes.

But other than the limitation above, it works quite well.

For maximum speed, I'd suggest putting a drive on each eSATA channel and stripe the two together with Apple's disk utility.

Thanks for the good answer. I use these enclosures: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB with my own new WD Black 2TB drives in them. Not sure how they appear as eSATA volumes.

 

[xraydoc]

Thanks for the good answer. I use these enclosures: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB with my own new WD Black 2TB drives in them. Not sure how they appear as eSATA volumes.

Those are single drive cases, so each drive will show up as an independent volume. If you have two drives, each one will mount to the desktop just like they do over FireWire or USB.

However, unless you're going to tie the two drives in to a software RAID 0 with Apple's Disk Utility, the $29 TB to FireWire800 adapter will likely yield the same speed for single, independent mechanical drives (~100MB/sec). The $180 eSATA TB hub would likely cost more than the performance would be worth.

The hub would make sense if you're going to RAID two drives together for speeds over 100MB/sec, but if you plan to keep them separate, then it's probably not worth it.

 

[CH12671]

I'm running one with the OWC dual drive enclosure (the two come together as a kit) and it performs really well if you use as a raid (as stated above). Here is what I get from just two 1TB spinning hard drives:


As a point of comparison, this is what i get from my internal SSD (Mercury 240 GB SSD)


And finally, here are my numbers for the OEM spinning HDD that came with my iMac:


I've been very pleased with it!

Edit: OK, I've tried google and dropbox, and neither one seems to be linking and actually showing my pictures. So here are the numbers:
TB eSATA (Two 1 TB hdd with OSx raid 0): Write: 346 MB/s, Read: 362 MB/s
Mercury Elite 240 GB SSD (Internal SATA): Write: 271 MB/s, Read: 431.7 MB/s
Internal SSD (OEM): Write: 116 MB/s, Read: 120MB/s
Edited Internal SSD numbers, I had looked at the wrong screenshot

 

[CH12671]

As comparison, I am getting the following from my single, 2TB firewire time machine: Write: 59 MB/s, Read: 66 MB/s

 

[theSeb]

However, unless you're going to tie the two drives in to a software RAID 0 with Apple's Disk Utility, the $29 TB to FireWire800 adapter will likely yield the same speed for single, independent mechanical drives (~100MB/sec). The $180 eSATA TB hub would likely cost more than the performance would be worth.

The hub would make sense if you're going to RAID two drives together for speeds over 100MB/sec, but if you plan to keep them separate, then it's probably not worth it.

That really depends on the drive. Most 3.5" drives are capable of between 120 to 180 MB/s, depending on the model. If you spend all day doing large sequential reads, or writes, then it might be worth it.

Here is my old mini review of this hub

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1366051/