I have a pair of 2TB Lacie drives that have full rez HD video on them. I want to get a faster throughput when editing so I would like to use the esata connection. What is a good brand to buy and also where is a good place to buy the card? Apple is a little expensive so I wouldn't mind buying from another retailer.

My Macpro is a little older so I am including the system information here as well.

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB

thank you,
apmende

OWC has some pretty good storage units for good prices. Promax was my go-to company for a while, but I had two or three bad experiences with sales reps who weren't returning inquiries. If you want speed and stability, you should get a RAID5 configuration.


www.derekmok.com

Thanks Derek but I was wanting an Esata Card to install into my Mac Pro. I need help especially since it's an older Mac Pro.

Is the LaCie 2 port eSATA PCI Card good?

I attached a link of the product ... I hope that's OK?
Lacie Esata Card

Your two 2TB Lacie drives, are they sitting inside your Mac Pro or in an external case? If they are already in an external case, what is the type? Is it Raid box? Need to know this before someone can recommending a Raid card?

The drives are in their external case. They are not a raid box.

thanks,
apmende

I have the same Mac Pro as you do and a two drive eSATA external case that is not a raid. I bought this raid card: (MAXPower eSATA 6G PCIe 2.0 RAID Capable Controller Card)

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MXPCIE6GRS/

It works very well for me. I also have the Caldigit VR.

I would also like to add an esata port however I'm trying to understand transfer rate vs. hardware bottleneck. I know esata (v2) is rated at 3 GB/s but if it's put into a pci slot isn't only 133 mb/s? Would the transfer rate be better if you used a bracket that could plug directly into the sata port on the motherboard?

Thanks

Will a PCI card fit into a PCI Express slot? I am only asking because I am considering the Lacie PCI card and I believe I have PCIe slots in my macpro 1, 1.

thanks

Yes, your Mac Pro 1,1 has PCIe slots. If your Lacie PCI card is standard PCI, I don't beleive it will work. If it did you would be defeating the purpose of setting up a raid. A standard PCI card is something like half the speed of a PCIe card. Then to add on top of that, the Mac Pro 1,1 PCI e slots are half the speed of the newer Mac Pros. You would be better off using a eSATA Extender Cable.

I tried the LaCie SATA II PCI Express card on my MacPro 1.1 and it worked poorly, especially with drives plugged into both of its ports. (It looks like generic junk, not even branded by LaCie.) I replaced it with the Sonnet Tempo SATA E2P PCI Express card, which has been trouble-free. Yes this LaCie and this Tempo are based on the same chip, but they're not the same.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

Thanks for all of the info. I decided to go with the Maxpower one suggested above.

apmende