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Which eSata expresscard/34 do you like?

S

steffi

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
I've got two enclosures that support eSata but I'm currently only using them as USB 2.0. I might want to try to speed up access by using eSata but there seem to be many cards available ranging in price.

Has anybody tried any of the offerings?
 
steffi said:
I've got two enclosures that support eSata but I'm currently only using them as USB 2.0. I might want to try to speed up access by using eSata but there seem to be many cards available ranging in price.

Has anybody tried any of the offerings?
Click to expand...

I have 2 different cards. One with two eSATA ports is based on the Silicon Image chipset (SIIG SC-SAEE12-S1). It works fine except you cannot boot from it and it requires a driver to work.

The second one uses the jMicron chipset (generic no name from China) and is bootable under Leopard and is recognized correctly as a target for installs. See this thread for more info.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/354849/

There is one big gotcha. The expresscard slot in the MBP is very poorly designed and does not hold the card in well. It is very easy to cause it to pop out. This will cause an immediate kernal panic or hard freeze. Doesn't matter if the card is just acting as controller for additional disk or as the boot controller, pop it out while its running and you're done.

Other than that is is a great option for fast external disk to test OS loads (if you get a bootable one.

Cheers,
 
I was going to say that I know what card I don't*like: the Lacie model. It's pretty sketchy...

Maybe the crashing problems I've had are related to the card getting disconnected. That'd be a shame as I don't know what else one can do to fix it.
 
I have a Sil3132 one from scan in the UK - it looks identical to the Sonnet card and although you can't boot OS X from it, you can boot Windows (if you have a boot camp partition on your internal HDD).

I've got a nice IcyBox st266UB USB/eSATA 2.5" drive enclosure hanging off it, you can power it from USB whilst using eSATA for data, which is a nice touch.
 
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