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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 vs FW800

Well, let's look at the marketing numbers.

Firewire 800 is 800Mbps.

The Red Station uses eSATA 2.0, which is 3Gbps or 3000Mbps.

800<<3000

So there you have it ... use eSATA whenever possible.

Its a trickier thing when you consider eSATA 2 versus USB 3. eSATA 2 is slower, but its also more efficient. So, even though USB 3 is faster on paper, in practice I'd expect eSATA 2 to be faster.

Of course, there is eSATA 3 which I think you can expect to find in the next Red Stations. That is 6Gbps. Oh and Thunderbolt ... that's 10Gbps full duplex. (So, you can read at 10Gbps from a Thunderbolt device and write 10Gbps to another Thunderbolt device on the same chain.)
 
But how in the Hell do you get eSata into a Mac running a rocket, quadro, BM and video card with no Cubix?

I guess we don't. :sad:
 
You can run an eSATA extender cable from your second optical drive port to the back of your Mac.

So ... if you have two Quadro 4000s, you can have five panels available at the back. THen you can attach the eSATA extension to the same slot as a Quadro 4000, plus keep your Rocket and BMD card.

Of course, with Thunderbolt coming to the next generation of Mac Pro and the Red Stations ...
 
Cool! So as simple as getting an extension eSATA cable and ditching the second DVD-R? That sounds worth pursuing.

Thanks!

Jim
 
Jeff Kilgore had a work around that involved running cables out the side of the MAC. so he bought an extra side panelt drille a hole and lined it wit rubber and voila. Then when its time to sell the mac he
will put back the original side panel so as not to void warranty. I think he actually ran the BM HDMI out the side. so it didnt take a slot.
 
As was already stated...
On our 17" MBP i7, when we use eSata it's a 30 min transfer via FW 800 from a full 128. If we use FW 800 Daisy chain, its an hour. Needless to say, so ready for thunderbolt.
 
i have it inthat way. optical drive.

but i lose the plug an play option, so i must restart the Mac before plug and un plug. but its ok
 
Tim Whitcomb said:
Jeff Kilgore had a work around that involved running cables out the side of the MAC. so he bought an extra side panelt drille a hole and lined it wit rubber and voila. Then when its time to sell the mac he
will put back the original side panel so as not to void warranty. I think he actually ran the BM HDMI out the side. so it didnt take a slot.
Click to expand...

Yep, did this with a 2008 Mac Pro when installing a RED Rocket. I came across a junk Mac Pro case, but the removable side panel was still good, so I made use of it. A rather elegant solution. Just drilled some holes to mount the BNC connectors, as they would mount in a rear slot cover.

In other systems I've done, with no free slot for things to run out from, a handy way to do it is nip the BNC connectors off the ends of the cables for the rocket. Run those cables through any of the hundreds of small holes on the back side of the Mac Pro, then reattach new connectors. I use Liberty or Canare 23AWG mini-coax connectors.

Diego el abuelo said:
i have it inthat way. optical drive.

but i lose the plug an play option, so i must restart the Mac before plug and un plug. but its ok
Click to expand...

the internal SATA ports, both in the lower optical bay on '09 and newer Macs and the ODD headers on the logic board in the pre-'09 models, are not fully compliant for eSATA use. They are no-frills SATA ports, just meant for optical devices. So yeah, lots of functionality not there -- hot-swap, sleep mode detection, etc.. They work just fine though once you're connected and the device is recognized. Biggest thing to worry about is the grounding. Make sure your eSATA connections are properly grounded! Also simple to do, you can usually ground right to the system case. Most internal SATA to eSATA brackets have tabs making contact with the slot plate they use, which in turn provides grounding. When you have to worry is when you just run an adapter cable from the port out of a hole in the back of the case.

Most port multiplier devices will NOT work with these internal SATA headers. They just don't have the necessary support to do so.
 
I just got an internal Mac Pro to eSata cable and got it working with the Red Station.

Did a transfer test using eSata and Firewire, each time to an internal SATA drive. They were pretty much identical in transfer speed.

Is this because both my destination SATA and Red Station (eSata) are on the same buss? I thought it would be much faster using eSata.

Or is it because it's on a 1st gen Mac Pro quad core? I haven't tried it on my 2010 hex core, wanted to troubleshoot on a machine I wasn't as afraid of blowing up!

UPDATE:

Just repeated the test, this time going to my external raid (PCIe card) and eSata was about twice as fast as FW800.

So I guess the moral is if you are copying to internal SATA drives you won't experience a noticeable difference between eSata and FW800?
 
We've just started using eSATA through an add-in board put into a Maxxdigital redrocket/raid box with a MBP 17" expresscard cable. Anyways, that's the setup. The only way for me to swap cards without rebooting is the following procedure:

1) Boot up the machine with a red volume formated SSD inserted. It mounts automatically on the desktop.
2) In red watcher choose the card and eject.
3) Power off the redstation (atleast that's what the manual says, but this thing works even if you don't).
4) Remove the card and insert your new card you want to copy from. Power on again.
5) In red watchdog select mount (the name in the list will be the same as the first card, but don't worry about that)
6) Wait roughly 30 seconds (!) before the card is mounted and on the desktop. If it doesn't appear then hit mount again and wait some more.
7) Copy your files as usual
8) Goto 3 (Edit: Eject your SSD via the RED watchdog before going to 3).

Works for me. Can be a bit frustrating waiting for it to mount, but it works. And compared to copying over firewire it is much faster anyways.
 
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Has anyone else had success with F. Malmer's method above? It doesn't sound too terribly inconvenient — just a 30 second delay on each mag. I would love to do this, and free up a PCIe slot if I can.
 
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