How long does it take to empty a 64gb red ssd card?

[joe hedge]

This product apparently ships "by 12/14/11"...

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresscard34thunderbolt.html

and will allow you to run Express34 cards from a Thunderbolt port, if you have a 17" MBP you can apparently run (2) Express34 cards at the same time

 

[Brian Iannone]

What would be the time to download a 64Gb card using eSata, into this 1.5 TB mini G-Raid

9-12 minutes

BTW, if I used RAID 1 on this HD, I would get an identical backup on each 750 Gb drive at a slower rate?

Yes. If you use RAID 1, the data will be copied to both drives simultaneously (and automatically). However, the speeds decrease. I'd estimate it would take 18-24 minutes if you're using the RAID 1 mode.

Because this is the G-Technology G-RAID Mini, it uses 2.5" drives. This is why it's able to be bus powered.

 

[Danai Chutinaton]

Some PC notebooks, especially 17" models, have dual eSATA ports to work with. If you need an ExpressCard to add a port or two, once again, the CalDigit card is great. USB3 is handy to have, but it's kinda just so-so in terms of real performance and most people are still not using it. Enclosures with eSATA, FW800 and USB2.0 will probably still be the most usable by most clients in most situations. eSATA 3Gbps is usually faster than USB3.0 even though the USB3 is "5Gbps" (4.8 peak, actually), it has a LOT of overhead and higher latency it only starts to outpace SATA-II on large, continuous transfers and it can't touch 6Gbps SATA. ...Not a whole lot of 6Gbps eSATA enclosures out there. Once again, don't know of any that also have FW800 or USB3.

Thank you Jeff! You've been extremely helpful.

In case others are interested, here's the link to the Caldigit Express34 to eSATA card that's being recommended by Jeff: http://www.caldigit.com/FASTA-2ex/

 

[DJ Meyer]

Just a +1 here for Areca 188x series on Mac. ATTO cards are great but the Areca's can be a bit better on price/performance depending the specific model. The new 1882's just came out as well.

We've also got an LSI 9265-8i on Win7 which has been great.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

While USB 3.0 is much slower than SATA/eSATA 6 Gbps, I've found it to be much faster than SATA/eSATA 3 Gbps. The fastest speed I've ever gotten out of a SATA 3 Gbps link was 355 MB/s. That's the fastest out of all the tests I've done in quite a number of different situations (HDD arrays, SSD arrays, SSD chip-link adaptors, etc.). I've only recently started testing USB 3.0, but the fastest speed I've gotten so far is 530 MB/s (4.24 Gbps).

Er... How are you benchmarking these speeds? 3Gbps SATA tops out at 286MB/s. You can't go faster than that, it's not possible. The only way to report faster than that is if you have a caching RAID controller and you are seeing bursts from that host. Or you are benchmarking writes and re seeing cyclical cacheing of data.

Same thing with USB3.0. I will agree on the 4.24Gbps.. About 4.3-ish Gbps is about nominal for most USB3.0 systems right now (absolute maximum "superspeed" mode is 4.8Gbps). USB3.0 also has a 10-bit per byte structure and even at the full 4.8Gbps, that is a maximum speed of 457MB/s.

As for speed, when talking about single, and in many cases, double, HDD systems, the 3Gbps SATA connection is often still faster as it is mostly a direct-to-drive interface. With USB3.0, you are adding an extra layer of obfuscation, nearly triple the packet latency in addition to the conversion. No single or dual HDD configuration on the market today can sustain the maximum data throughput of 3Gbps, let alone the 457MB/s peak of USB3.0, so you are speed capped by the drive interface and drive itself and on USB3.0 are hampered by the interface conversion and the latency. USB3.0 operates as a layer on top of USB2.0 and still shares the same USB2.0 signaling rate, the latency is huge.

That speed was accomplished with a RAID 0 array of SSD's wired over a single USB 3.0 link.

That is, of course, a different animal than what we were discussing in the thread. I should hope it performs faster! But either way, it's still limited by the numbers I posted above. If you are seeing rates, or what are probably bursts, in excess of those numbers it's due to cache fluctuation and surges on the host, not at the interface level. So that's why I asked how you were benchmarking. If you are using a reliable benchmarking tool, it would be interesting to see a performance profile for the entire data surface of those systems. For every 355MB/s peak on a 3Gbps host that you see, there has to be a fall-off somewhere or you are pulling or pushing repetitive data that can by recycled in cache on the host controller or drives themselves, which will lead you to bogus numbers.

That's significantly faster than even the maximum throughput that SATA 3 Gbps is capable of. Due to USB's architecture, it has overhead issues when transferring large amounts of data. USB 2.0 is good for mice and keyboards and does an okay job at transporting current, but it's useless for hard drives. However, USB 3.0 is surprisingly good with data. I personally have found it to be faster than SATA 3 Gbps even with small files (100MB, 250MB, 500MB files). When transferring files smaller than 100MB, however, the transfer rates slow down a lot to around 20 MB/s with the array I was using.

The latency due to the signal initialization and timing kills.

As you say Jeff, there is a lack of hard drive and RAID enclosures that have an eSATA 6 Gbps connection. Because of this, I'm going to be using a Sans Digital enclosure with USB 3.0 for the primary backup array of my main editing workstation. If there was an abundance of eSATA 6 Gbps enclosures out there, I would recommend it instead. However, right now, I think USB 3.0 is a better choice.

Depends on the application. For enclosures with one or two drives, USB3.0 is a reasonable choice, but I think I would prefer eSATA in most performance situations, especially if we're talking lots of random access or access of small files -- audio, database, documents, etc.. Ultimately I think it comes down to any requirements or restrictions imposed by who will be using the drives. If it's for client use, you're really at their mercy anyway and will have to deliver what they want or are capable of connecting to. USB3.0 makes more sense if you're passing around enclosures with 4 or more drives or multiple SSDs where you can take advantage of the increased bandwidth. For something not intended to be shuttled around, or one that can be given with confidence of the recipient having 6Gbps eSATA or SAS, it would of course be better to go with a 6Gbps SAS/SATA setup.

I'm not trying to say anyone is wrong or anything (absolutely not what I'm trying to do). I'm just pointing out some of the speeds I've gotten with USB 3.0.

You're fine, all good discussion. And I believe your numbers, I just question your benchmarking software or methods.

Of course, neither USB 3.0 or eSATA 6 Gbps can compare with Thunderbolt. If only they started making some more enclosures that supported it...

More Thunderbolt is coming. I beta tested a Thunderbolt to dual eSATA adapter and it's awesome. But the makers haven't sent it to final production yet, they just don't know if there's enough market for it (yet)... I think that there is, but I'm not them. The two things holding back Thunderbolt at the moment are:

1> Intel and Apple launched it earlier this year and no one had any heads-up on how to develop for it. Only a couple key companies got word of it before the launch -- LaCie and Promise were the only two with advance notice who make storage products. Andy they learned about Thunderbolt literally just a couple weeks before, just enough time to put together an announcement of what product(s) they might deliver first.

2> Mainstream inclusion of Thunderbolt on PC motherboards is still at least 4 months way. Until this happens, once Intel rolls out the next chipset iteration that includes integrated Thunderbolt host, the majority of peripheral and external enclosure makers are going to ignore it as a standard. It seems Intel may be dropping the requirement that Thunderbolt include display output as that has been the primary hold-up for peripheral makers looking to offer Thunderbolt add-in PCIe cards. Otherwise it shoulders PCIe Thunderbolt card options onto graphics card makers. And I'm pretty sure than nVidia and AMD/ATI will not be interested in pushing Intel's new interface, so I wouldn't expect to see Thunderbolt in any reference card designs from any of the GPU makers. And card manufacturers rarely like to deviate from the reference designs other than tweaking clock rates and cooling implementations.

Thunderbolt is a PCI Express interface and uses PCIe signaling topology. So any "Thunderbolt" hard drive system is still gong to be SATA, we are just relocating the SATA host from existing directly on the PCIe bus to existing on the external device and communicating by way of a PCI cascade interface. Other than the Promise and LaCie HDD devices, all the Thunderbolt products hitting the market now are mostly devices that already exist in form with a PCIe card interface. Things like the BlackMagic UltraStudio and the Promise FiberChannel adapter, they have been adapted to move their PCIe to xxxx controller into the external housing and use a cascade relay to connect it. Relatively quick to market -- thus how we went from the big unveil back in February and companies like Promise already showing a functional prototype less than 2 full months later at NAB.

I think Thunderbolt wil be great, but like USB in its early days, no one took much interest until it rolled out as integrated with common PC's. And even then it took years for Intel to convince people that it really was their technology and not some bastard creation of Apple. These days people like Apple, so that's not a hold up... Just the fact that PC users don't care because they don't have it and USB3.0 is still more than good enough for 99% of every user out there, including most of us here moving around big video files.

 

[Brian Iannone]

EDIT:
There was an anomaly in my results. I've retracted my numbers. Even 17-year-olds can make mistakes sometimes...

 

[N.D. Paolo]

More Thunderbolt is coming. I beta tested a Thunderbolt to dual eSATA adapter and it's awesome. But the makers haven't sent it to final production yet, they just don't know if there's enough market for it (yet)... I think that there is, but I'm not them.

Awesome info, I needed that part a couple months ago!

 

[clubnutz2]

Hi Jeff,

Just had a question about the off load times being posted in this thread.

In the stated times is this taking account for writing to both a primary and back up destination or just a single drive?

Is any CMS software being used (R3D manager, shot put pro...etc)?

I also wanted see if you would offer your input on a system I am getting ready to build.

Once the new I macs will be comming out, I will be purching a fully loaded system with an internal SSD and 2 thunderbolt ports.

I was think about purchasing the sonnet thunderbolt to express adapters, 2 of these

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresscard34thunderbolt.html

And using ESATA card in each of these. I was going to buy them from sonnet, but sound like I should buy them from call digit, due to an issue with lion.

My plan was to use the red station to go in ESTA, then to go in to the sonnet express to thunderbolt on then first thunderbolt port

Then come out thunderbolt to express , then ESATA express card to 2 G DRIVE 1 or 2 TB.

Should I be buIlding some sort of RAID config or one of the thunderbolt LaCie drives? If so how do I Accomplish redundancy onsite?

The 2 things I am require to do are

Use R3D manager for offloads

And provide the data in to separate sources. 1 stays with me and one goes with then client. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[seth lesko]

Sorry, about that. Didn't know about the real name thing.


Hi Jeff,

Just had a question about the off load times being posted in this thread.

In the stated times is this taking account for writing to both a primary and back up destination or just a single drive?

Is any CMS software being used (R3D manager, shot put pro...etc)?

I also wanted see if you would offer your input on a system I am getting ready to build.

Once the new I macs will be comming out, I will be purching a fully loaded system with an internal SSD and 2 thunderbolt ports.

I was think about purchasing the sonnet thunderbolt to express adapters, 2 of these

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/ec...underbolt.html

And using ESATA card in each of these. I was going to buy them from sonnet, but sound like I should buy them from call digit, due to an issue with lion.

My plan was to use the red station to go in ESTA, then to go in to the sonnet express to thunderbolt on then first thunderbolt port

Then come out thunderbolt to express , then ESATA express card to 2 G DRIVE 1 or 2 TB.

Should I be buIlding some sort of RAID config or one of the thunderbolt LaCie drives? If so how do I Accomplish redundancy onsite?

The 2 things I am require to do are

Use R3D manager for offloads

And provide the data in to separate sources. 1 stays with me and one goes with then client. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Times listed so far in this thread are maximum throughput numbers. Meaning that is maximum copy speed. If you do a verification pass on the copy, it will double the amount of time it takes. Most systems these days are reasonably fast at hashing together checksum info as the verify is performed.

As for the dual thunderbolt configuration you're talking about, that seems a bit overkill. Do you really need TWO eSATA cards running? Each Thunderbolt port technically has enough bandwidth, plus a bit extra, to support three 6Gbps SATA-3 ports at full speed. The Sonnet box looks alright, so does the small Magma PCIe to Thunderbolt unit. If I were to build one of those today, my card of choice to install in it would be a CalDigit 6GU3. It would give me dual 6Gbps eSATA ports in addition to dual USB3.0 ports. Of course, you wouldn't be able to use all 4 ports simultaneously at full speed, but we have to be realistic here about what you might actually need and what devices you will be connecting.

I have a current iMac 27" and it's great. I can't wait to see what the next iteration brings with the new CPUs and chipsets. We should see about 10~15% boost in CPU power (again) and USB3.0 ports (instead of USB2.0). Other than that I don't expect much change. Then again, there are a lot of credible rumors floating about that Apple will be doing major redesigns on all their computer lines in 2012. The Mac Pro is obviously over-due and I have it on good authority that there is a new Mac Pro coming. I can't say more than that, only confirmation that it has not been killed as a product line. So that is another possible option.

I believe R3DDM supports offloading to multiple destinations simultaneously. There are a couple ways you can make this work faster or better though. Until recently, my own solution was the CalDigit S2VR eSATA RAID units. They've been discontinued, but I picked up a couple in late '07 and in '08 and have been using them since. There are other similar solutions on the market, but anyway... They're a dual-drive unit with drive trays that can be quickly pulled from the back of the unit. I would put blank drives in them and configure as a RAID-1 mirror and go about my business. At the end of the day I had redundant copies of my offloaded footage and I could hand off a drive if I needed. Often, I would hand off both drives to different people and retain the RED RAM or RED Drive media that had all the footage on it, so there would be 3 copies leaving the shoot.

You can set up software mirroring via the operating system. It's very low overhead and because it interfaces the SATA hosts directly, it can issue simultaneous write commands, so you don't get penalized on your data throughput. If you just do the multiple destinations through R3DDM, it may take longer. I don't use it, so can't comment on how efficiently it handles or if there would be any restrictions or speed penalties that you wouldn't have with the other solutions I just mentioned.

You can always expand eSATA ports via an external port multiplier or using a port-multiplied cabinet you install the drives into. There's lots of options when you start digging into it.

Given Intel's schedule with new CPUs and chipsets, I would expect new iMacs sometime around early February. New Mac Pro systems in April... These are speculative time frames, but seem the most likely. And if they're doing major re-designs that could have an influence on product timing as well.

We should have a lot more options for Thunderbolt peripherals and adapters this next year. Probably in the latter half of the year once PC motherboards start rolling out with Thunderbolt ports on them should ship this coming spring.

Best redundancy on-site is probably through mirrored copies. Some of your best performance options for smaller systems usually come about by having small RAID-0 performance RAID systems and then mirroring those or writing duplicate data to them.

 

[Jonas Klittmark]

As for simply off loading a 64 GB SSD quickly and cost effectively, with at least one backup, would the following setup work well?
- MBP
- CalDigit SATA ExpressCard
- G-Tech G-RAID 4 TB @ RAID 1

This is important since I am going to try and survive on only 2 64GB SSDs and a DIT... There is so much else I want to spend on rather that SSDs right now.

 

[seth lesko]

Times listed so far in this thread are maximum throughput numbers. Meaning that is maximum copy speed. If you do a verification pass on the copy, it will double the amount of time it takes. Most systems these days are reasonably fast at hashing together checksum info as the verify is performed.

As for the dual thunderbolt configuration you're talking about, that seems a bit overkill. Do you really need TWO eSATA cards running? Each Thunderbolt port technically has enough bandwidth, plus a bit extra, to support three 6Gbps SATA-3 ports at full speed. The Sonnet box looks alright, so does the small Magma PCIe to Thunderbolt unit. If I were to build one of those today, my card of choice to install in it would be a CalDigit 6GU3. It would give me dual 6Gbps eSATA ports in addition to dual USB3.0 ports. Of course, you wouldn't be able to use all 4 ports simultaneously at full speed, but we have to be realistic here about what you might actually need and what devices you will be connecting.

I have a current iMac 27" and it's great. I can't wait to see what the next iteration brings with the new CPUs and chipsets. We should see about 10~15% boost in CPU power (again) and USB3.0 ports (instead of USB2.0). Other than that I don't expect much change. Then again, there are a lot of credible rumors floating about that Apple will be doing major redesigns on all their computer lines in 2012. The Mac Pro is obviously over-due and I have it on good authority that there is a new Mac Pro coming. I can't say more than that, only confirmation that it has not been killed as a product line. So that is another possible option.

I believe R3DDM supports offloading to multiple destinations simultaneously. There are a couple ways you can make this work faster or better though. Until recently, my own solution was the CalDigit S2VR eSATA RAID units. They've been discontinued, but I picked up a couple in late '07 and in '08 and have been using them since. There are other similar solutions on the market, but anyway... They're a dual-drive unit with drive trays that can be quickly pulled from the back of the unit. I would put blank drives in them and configure as a RAID-1 mirror and go about my business. At the end of the day I had redundant copies of my offloaded footage and I could hand off a drive if I needed. Often, I would hand off both drives to different people and retain the RED RAM or RED Drive media that had all the footage on it, so there would be 3 copies leaving the shoot.

You can set up software mirroring via the operating system. It's very low overhead and because it interfaces the SATA hosts directly, it can issue simultaneous write commands, so you don't get penalized on your data throughput. If you just do the multiple destinations through R3DDM, it may take longer. I don't use it, so can't comment on how efficiently it handles or if there would be any restrictions or speed penalties that you wouldn't have with the other solutions I just mentioned.

You can always expand eSATA ports via an external port multiplier or using a port-multiplied cabinet you install the drives into. There's lots of options when you start digging into it.

Given Intel's schedule with new CPUs and chipsets, I would expect new iMacs sometime around early February. New Mac Pro systems in April... These are speculative time frames, but seem the most likely. And if they're doing major re-designs that could have an influence on product timing as well.

We should have a lot more options for Thunderbolt peripherals and adapters this next year. Probably in the latter half of the year once PC motherboards start rolling out with Thunderbolt ports on them should ship this coming spring.

Best redundancy on-site is probably through mirrored copies. Some of your best performance options for smaller systems usually come about by having small RAID-0 performance RAID systems and then mirroring those or writing duplicate data to them.

Thanks for such a detailed response!

What RAID would you reccomend since the cali digit has been discontinued? What drives would you suggest for them?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

As for simply off loading a 64 GB SSD quickly and cost effectively, with at least one backup, would the following setup work well?
- MBP
- CalDigit SATA ExpressCard
- G-Tech G-RAID 4 TB @ RAID 1

This is important since I am going to try and survive on only 2 64GB SSDs and a DIT... There is so much else I want to spend on rather that SSDs right now.

Yes, that would work alright. You can connect the G-RAID to one port and the RED Station reader to the other port. Without specifically testing, I would expect offloads could happen at speeds of 180~200MB/s. Half that if you do a verify pass.

Thanks for such a detailed response!

What RAID would you reccomend since the cali digit has been discontinued? What drives would you suggest for them?

Oh, just the specific model I was using has been discontinued. CalDigit makes their VR RAID which is the newer model of the same thing. The drives still exit the rear easily, but use a pin-hole key tool to eject them rather than the old model which just had a couple thumb screws. The newer sled designs take an extra minute or two when installing or removing the HDD's and the first time around, if you buy the unit new, you'll be voiding the warranty by removing the drives. They ship held in place with Torx-Security screws -- the ones with the little security pins in the middle. So you have to round up the right screwdriver tip to get them out, then replace the screws with something common. They have an updated VR2 model due here in a couple months and I believe there will be a Thunderbolt model as well.

These units are very similar in build and performance to other products like the G-Tech. I always like my S2VR model just because it was so simple to swap drives.

Another option if you're looking for a similar unit that holds two HDD's is to roll your own. One of the best enclosures available for that for 3.5" drives is this one from OWC. Drives aren't as convenient to swap as the CalDigit unit though, but it's cheap and reliable. OWC also has a quad-drive unit that is great with easy access to swap drives at the rear.


It's hard to recommend specific RAIDs as it depends on each person's needs. I tend to need or want different storage options from one job to another. Best thing to do is to research a bit and get a feel for what options are out there. If you're working with a current model Macbook Pro or iMac, where Thunderbolt is an option, the Promise RAIDs are excellent. Unfortunately, while they perform well, they're not all that rugged in construction. Not something I want to be lugging around in the field.

Lots more Thunderbolt options coming soon. CalDigit has their ThunderExpress adapter, which will let you connect their larger HD One and HDPro RAIDs via Thunderbolt. It's due to start shipping January / February.

I tend to recommend CalDigit a lot because they're reasonably priced and readily available, ruggedly built. Much the same as G-Tech, but more configurable or user-serviceable.

If the smaller 2.5" HDD's or SSD's interest you as offload and or hand-off solutions, there's obviously the 2.5" RED Station module. There are also other creative solutions like the Patriot Convoy which is the same form-factor as a 3.5" HDD and can be mounted and connected as one, even in a drive enclosure or system. But it houses two 2.5" devices in a RAID configuration. Additionally, it has hot-swap access from the front of the unit, so you can put it in a PC system or enclosure that has a 3.5" exposed "floppy disk" bay and have hot-swap access for the two drives. Sadly, I think the Convoy has been discontinued as well. It was just too cool for mainstream consumption....

 

[Ian B. Johnson]

I just tested my 64GB SSD's for data copying in Finder. I made a 16GB disk image and copied it back and forth to test sustained rates. Here were my (real-world, pretty unscientific) results:

Write to SSD from internal laptop drive (stock 7200rpm) over eSATA = 63.74MB/s (16:44 for a full card)
Write to laptop from SSD over eSATA = 61.12MB/s (17:27 for a full card)

Write to SSD from internal laptop over FW800 = 58.92MB/s (18:06 for a full card)
Write to laptop from SSD over FW800 = 65.26MB/s (16:20 for a full card)

For eSATA on my Macbook Pro, I'm using this Expresscard. I did these tests once on a single card, and ran them on a second card to make sure they were in the right ballpark. Do these speeds seem slow to anyone?

 

[Deanan]

I just tested my 64GB SSD's for data copying in Finder. I made a 16GB disk image and copied it back and forth to test sustained rates. Here were my (real-world, pretty unscientific) results:

Write to SSD from internal laptop drive (stock 7200rpm) over eSATA = 63.74MB/s (16:44 for a full card)
Write to laptop from SSD over eSATA = 61.12MB/s (17:27 for a full card)

Write to SSD from internal laptop over FW800 = 58.92MB/s (18:06 for a full card)
Write to laptop from SSD over FW800 = 65.26MB/s (16:20 for a full card)

For eSATA on my Macbook Pro, I'm using this Expresscard. I did these tests once on a single card, and ran them on a second card to make sure they were in the right ballpark. Do these speeds seem slow to anyone?

Your laptop drive is the speed limit on your tests.
If you bring up the activity monitor and look at disk activity, you should see read and write numbers that are more realistic.

 

[Mike P.]

I just tested my 64GB SSD's for data copying in Finder. I made a 16GB disk image and copied it back and forth to test sustained rates. Here were my (real-world, pretty unscientific) results:

Write to SSD from internal laptop drive (stock 7200rpm) over eSATA = 63.74MB/s (16:44 for a full card)
Write to laptop from SSD over eSATA = 61.12MB/s (17:27 for a full card)

Write to SSD from internal laptop over FW800 = 58.92MB/s (18:06 for a full card)
Write to laptop from SSD over FW800 = 65.26MB/s (16:20 for a full card)

For eSATA on my Macbook Pro, I'm using this Expresscard. I did these tests once on a single card, and ran them on a second card to make sure they were in the right ballpark. Do these speeds seem slow to anyone?

Would it not be faster/better to go from eSATA to FW800 external, avoiding the internal drive altogether? That should be ~90mb/s realworld (limited by FW800) but you'd be dumping to workable drives (meaning you don't have to recopy off the laptop internal to a faster external drive when you go to edit.)

Or am I missing something?

 

[Ian B. Johnson]

Probably. I didn't have an external drive on hand at the time, but later I'll try eSATA to and external eSATA.

 

[Mike P.]

Probably. I didn't have an external drive on hand at the time, but later I'll try eSATA to and external eSATA.

Wait, what? Isn't the SSD connected to the eSATA externally? Or are you saying you don't have TWO external drives available for testing (which is need to hook one to eSATA and the other to the FW800)?

You could also just test internal drive performance using whatever HDD benchmark and it'll let you know where that drive stands. Chances are it'll be tapping out at around 60-65mb/s, which will let you know definitively that it's the bottleneck in your above tests.

 

[Ian B. Johnson]

Wait, what? Isn't the SSD connected to the eSATA externally? Or are you saying you don't have TWO external drives available for testing (which is need to hook one to eSATA and the other to the FW800)?

You could also just test internal drive performance using whatever HDD benchmark and it'll let you know where that drive stands. Chances are it'll be tapping out at around 60-65mb/s, which will let you know definitively that it's the bottleneck in your above tests.

My Expresscard has two eSATA ports, so I could plug both an external drive and the Redmag.

 

[Mike P.]

My Expresscard has two eSATA ports, so I could plug both an external drive and the Redmag.

Oh snaps... yeah, that would be best; even if the bandwidth of the eSATA is shared, 6GB/s (divided by two devices) is still ~3x faster than an entire FW800 channel dedicated solely to one drive. Theoretically, anyway.