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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Best eSata PCIe card? (I'm in eSata hell!!!)

Morning Glory

Morning Glory

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Greetings fellow RED users,

I've just upgraded to a tower for my Data Management station. I wanted to take full advantage of the speed possibilities of connecting external devices via esata, especially with my shiny, new R2E cable. So begins my folly

First I got a Rocket RAID 2322 card with a highpoint mini SAS - esata fan cable. It kept kicking the Red Raid, and was slow and unreliable with the LaCie d2 Quadra drives I use, slower than FW 400.

Next, I got a E4P sonnet tempo card. The first time I used it with R3D Data Manager it was a dream come true, 0.4:1 minutes to Gigs (I was getting 1.4:1 minutes to Gigs with my laptop and the eSata sonnet 34 express card) The second Digimag I offloaded was 1:1. The third was 1.4:1. Getting the same speed as a laptop was not what I was tripling my budget for my kit. Also when a new drive was attached it would cease all HDD activity for 1 minute. Also, more than two drives would cause slow downs and the occasional kernel panic. I updated the firmware and that made things worse. Everytime I tried to mount a third drive it would kernel panic. So I reverted to the old fimware. Called tech support (who sent me the new firmware) and after a few back and forths they determined it was a faulty card. Haven't had the time to exchange it yet. Not sure if I'll get a new one or my money back.

Third I tried the highpoint 2314 card. It only recognized the 1TB Lacie d2 Quadra. Not the 6TB Lacie 4 Big Quadra, even after I initialized it through the Highpoint interface. And not the Red Raid, didn't even see it. So that got returned same day.

Here I stand, with an eSata need for 4 ports and speed. I still have the mini SAS- Esata fan cable. For external drives I use the Lacie Quadras and of course the Red Raid. My system is a octo 2.26 Nehalem with 12 gigs of Ram. Anyone have any recommendations? I would appreciate any help.
 
ATTO all the way. I gave up on Highpoint and glad I did. I have an R380 now.
 
Thanks for the advice, guys! Seeing as the ports are SAS, how do you connect the R380 to the eSATA drives?
 
eSata PCIe Card Update.

eSata PCIe Card Update.

Oh, and an update, I'm trying the Lacie eSATA interface 4 Port PCIe card (I ordered it before I got a response here). It didn't recognize any drive with the driver from the disc. Then I downloaded the latest driver (from 2006!) and it mounted the Lacie 1TB Quadra d2, the 6TB 4Big and the Red Raid. But it froze my computer. So, I'm back to limping along with the sonnet until I can spend more time, perhaps call Lacie, and try and sort this out. And more excitingly, check into the ATTO option.
 
Both Provantage and NewEgg have the HighPoint mini-SAS to 4 x eSATA fan-out cable for about $50.

Using the ATTO H680 here.
 
Cool. I do have that cable, I tried it with the Rocket RAID 2322 card to no avail. I am looking forward to trying one of the ATTO cards. Jeff, do you use the R2E cable with the H680? I have one and a female-female eSATA that I tried with the fan cable when using the 2322 and had mediocre results. Is that part of your set up? Using a graphics card and the Red Rocket there are only 4x slots available. Do you guys think there will be a notable difference between the R380 and the H680 in a 4x slot?
 
Definitly you should try ATTO.
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This seems to be related to the problem I am having. I bought a Norco DS1220 drive cage, 3ware 9690SA-8E raid card, and the HighPoint mini-SAS to 4 ESATA cable. I filled the Norco DS1220 drive cage with Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EADS drives. I connected the HighPoint cable to the Norco DS1220 with the 3ware card installed in the server. With the 3ware 9690SA-8E card installed in both windows and Linux servers with the most recent firmware and drivers none of the drives in the DS1220 are detected in the 3ware RAID utility. I have tried 2 different cables of the same type and the same results are produced. I have tried a different external esata drive and the 3ware RAID utility failed to detect it also. I am not sure what exactly the problem is and I would appreciate any suggestions.
 
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