eSATA card

[Ryan McGregor]

Hey can someone recommend a good, reliable 4 port PCI-Express eSATA card for a new MacPro?

 

[Jordan Livingston]

I use the Sonnet Tempo SATA E4P in my MacPro.

- Jordan

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The *best* would probably be the ATTO H680 SAS HBA. Gives you two mini-SAS ports with 4 channels each or think 8 eSATA channels via the proper cabling.

Otherwise the Sonnet is a good choice and easier to deal with from a cabling point of view. Also the CalDigit FASTA-4X is great too and I have both a Mac Pro and a few PCs with the CalDigit cards -- work great. I might have an extra one sitting around, but you should probably buy a new one, they're pretty cheap. Half of the ones I own come bundled with eSATA drives/RAIDs.

 

[Stephen Vicari]

Which, between the Caldigit and the Sonnet, will give you enough bandwidth to transfer to four separate eSATA drives (if need be) without losing speed?

 

[Conrad Hunziker]

The *best* would probably be the ATTO H680 SAS HBA. Gives you two mini-SAS ports with 4 channels each or think 8 eSATA channels via the proper cabling.

I gotta disagree with that one. I have the H680, and it does not work with eSATA fanout cables. It suffers from the 2Tb barrier, and generally does not reliably write to any drives (random unmounts, very slow writes). This is with multiple cables from different manufactures.

Ive had a long documented discussion with Atto support spanning multiple weeks. They finally gave up, saying that eSATA is specifically NOT supported with this card, and in addition, they will *consider* it as a future feature.

So, stay from the H680 for eSATA use. My H680 is collecting dust right now.

 

[Jordan Livingston]

Dear Conrad / Jeff,

I have the ATTO H380 SAS adaptor. Do either if you know if that works properly with eSATA fanout cables?

Thanks + Best,

- Jordan

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The H380 works great. Just be sure you have the latest BIOS and drivers if you're on a Mac with Snow Leopard.