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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 :)

RED Station & eSATA Cards

Steve Johnson

Steve Johnson

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Hey All,

was reading through the RED Station manual and it states on page 2.10 (point 2.5.2.1 eSATA) that:

IMPORTANT: ONLY Silicon Image or Highpoint SATA cards will connect to RED STATION mod- ules through eSATA at this time.

I was just wondering if this is still the case or is it open to other eSATA cards.

I am about to purchase a Sonnet Tempo E4P eSATA card for my MacPro and just got wondering if this will work with the RED Station family for connection?

I don't see any reason why it wouldn't but has anyone got any experience with the Sonnet Tempo E4P?

Thanks in advance.

Steve
:))
 
I have the sonnet card and it works great for mbp
 
Paul Hazlett said:
I have the sonnet card and it works great for mbp
Click to expand...


Paul - it works on the MBP? How's that?

:))

But glad to know it works with the RES Station family.
 
i have Tempo SATA Pro ExpressCard and it doesnt work with MBP.bought it cuz people said it works perfect on apple and i did..now its a waste of money for me
also im using Atto H680 on macpro and damn thing works only with hard drives and other e-sata products..not with RED STATIONS!
this feels like im a stupid
 
Russ Campbell said:
The Sonnet E4P eSATA card doesn't work with RED SSD's or any FAT32 formatted media as it uses the Marvel chipset. This is the same with their Tempo Pro eSATA expresscard/34.
Click to expand...

Thanks Russ

Anyone recommend eSATA cards that work with the RED Base station / CD Module / SSD module and say GTech drives?
 
Steve Johnson said:
Hey All,

was reading through the RED Station manual and it states on page 2.10 (point 2.5.2.1 eSATA) that:

IMPORTANT: ONLY Silicon Image or Highpoint SATA cards will connect to RED STATION mod- ules through eSATA at this time.

I was just wondering if this is still the case or is it open to other eSATA cards.

I am about to purchase a Sonnet Tempo E4P eSATA card for my MacPro and just got wondering if this will work with the RED Station family for connection?

I don't see any reason why it wouldn't but has anyone got any experience with the Sonnet Tempo E4P?

Thanks in advance.

Steve
:))
Click to expand...

Wow, shit!... ...Sorry.

Thanks Steve, If this is real, terrible news for many people.

I can´t find it, but I remember a post of someone using it with the Echo from sonnet (Thunderbolt Expresscard34 adapter) and the REDStation; talking about 12 minutes download a full 128 GB SSD with MBP -> Promise TB -> Echo -> RedStation.

But if this man was smoking something... something good, and you are right, this is very bad news. I mean, no MacBookPro solution to work with eStata RedStation, and everybody want the HDRx connected everytime.

I hate work with PCs but I can hear the world screaming at me to buy one, at least for SSDs downloads.
 
Be interested to herar if RED has any official sanctioned eSATA cards for the MacPro..

;))
 
I have been using a Atto R680 with my RedStation and getting some odd things. Cards read-only and not reading as fast as I would expect. Maybe this was my problem.

I have a Highpoint card in another system and it seems to work just fine.


Dusty
 
Oddly, the RED Station worked (somewhat) with my Sonnet E4P, but I was generally having all sorts of problems with the Sonnet card so I threw it out the window and got myself a Caldigit FASTA-4e and I haven't looked back. I'm generally getting 15-20% performance over the Sonnet card and hot-plugging eSATA devices is no longer a problem. The Sonnet is flaky (at best!).
 
Tony Lorentzen said:
Oddly, the RED Station worked (somewhat) with my Sonnet E4P, but I was generally having all sorts of problems with the Sonnet card so I threw it out the window and got myself a Caldigit FASTA-4e and I haven't looked back. I'm generally getting 15-20% performance over the Sonnet card and hot-plugging eSATA devices is no longer a problem. The Sonnet is flaky (at best!).
Click to expand...

Also binned the Sonnet. Worked with Snow Leopard, but not Lion. Unstable and slower than the Lacie on both platforms.
 
Thanks guys.

This gets confusing. Going to call my Bomb Squad rep and see what they suggest is a recommended card for using. I think there should be a recommend / tested cards that are approved for testing, mentioned somewhere in the manual instead of just the manufacturers.

Can anyone from RED chime in and recommendations? Thanks.
 
The cards mentioned by RED in the docs are just the ones they have specifically tested. And that info is old.

My go-to card is the ATTO H680 and I was recommending it to everyone until just recently. It seems some people are having trouble with it. I own 3 of them and all have run flawless for me. One of these cards is running under Windows 7, the other two are in Mac Pro towers (an '09 and a '10 model). Both Mac Pro systems are still running Snow Leopard due to some persistent issues that Apple hasn't fixed yet. I keep a Lion boot partition on the '10 Mac Pro, but haven't really tested the RED Station there.

On the Macbook Pro, the CalDigit cards have yet to fail me, so I've been good there. Sonnet have been more trouble and I've given up on them. Lots of little glitches, incompatibilities, their new ThunderBolt to ExpressCard adapter is a piece of crap and compatible with nothing except for two of their own cards and even then isn't guaranteed to work.

Additionally, the older CalDigit FASTA-4EX (now discontinued) works well (it's a PCIe v1.x card) with 4 eSATA 3Gbps ports. It seems a lot of people are having good luck with the OWC eSATA cards. Or whatever brand it is that they sell, but I have not personally tried them.

Under Windows, nothing seems to be as picky. RED Station works whether I plug it into a Rosewill, HighPoint, Areca, ATTO, ports right on the motherboard, etc.. Works on my 3 year old HP laptop I'm going to replace with the next Intel chip update...
 
I have a 2009 MacPro, latest version and fresh build of Lion, H680 card and it reads/writes just fine. I clocked it at 225MB/sec on Blackmagic's speed test.

EDIT: This is on Lion 10.7.3, using the latest H680 drivers from ATTO: osx_drv_esashba2_200.dmg
and ATTO H680 firmware: 2011_09_27

Anoter variable is I'm using a early model Redstation SSD reader, which I purchased ahead of my Epic-M in May 2011. Don't know if Red has done any firmware twiddles or not in the interrim.
 
Hey Jeff, I was looking for a compatible card for Windows 7 64 bit and trying to go with the "Listed" card manufacturers in the RedStation manual. Would either of these two cards listed below fit the bill in your opinion? we are having trouble with the eSATA connection on our Motherboard reading the RedStation. Thanks!!!!


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115078

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115076

Under Windows, nothing seems to be as picky. RED Station works whether I plug it into a Rosewill, HighPoint, Areca, ATTO, ports right on the motherboard, etc.. Works on my 3 year old HP laptop I'm going to replace with the next Intel chip update...[/QUOTE]
 
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