G-SATA to MacBook Pro?

[Rachel Oliver]

Hi;

Can anyone tell me if the 500GB G-SATA drives from G-tech will work with the new SATA express cards like this http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/seritek2sm2e.html for the MBP?
Thanks....

Olly

[Tony Tremble]

You are better off IMHO in purchasing the Expresscard and 2 drive enclosure bundle from Firmtek. Buy a couple of SATA drives of your choice.

I have two 500 GB WD RE2 Enterprise SATA drives in my enclosure. Works a dream with my MBP. I have it configured as a 1TB RAID 0 drive for media work on the go.

You'll probably get a better deal this way.

TT

[Rachel Oliver]

Hi;

I totally agree, unfortunately I shelled out for one of the G-SATA's last year so thats's the reason for the origonal question, I do plan on creating a new raid at some point but this is just to get me started...
I'm assuming my G-SATA should work with the express 34 controllers....

Olly

[Tony Tremble]

Hi Rachel

Yes should work fine.

Sorry I jumped to the wrong conclusion.:)

ATB

TT

[Brian Spatz]

Has anyone compared the *actual* transfer rates they get with an expresscard adapter and SATA drive set-up vs. a firewire 800 drive?

[Steve Maller]

from http://www.barefeats.com/quick.html

December 23rd, 2006 (Corrected) -- ExpressCard SATA bandwidth woes -- A reader wrote me about his frustration when connecting a four drive Port-Multiplication (PM) enclosure to an ExpressCard/34 SATA adapter installed on his MacBook Pro. Four drive RAID 0 benchmarked at 120MB/s. That was only slightly faster than two drives (90MB/s).

Though the theoretical bandwidth of an ExpressCard is 256MB/s, the current speed limit of all ExpressCards is about HALF of that when used with a RAID set no matter how many drives are connected. This is due to the fact that all current ExpressCard products use the Silicon Image 3132 chip set and, for some reason, that's as fast as it can go. Actually, the same is true of when the 3132 chipset is used in a PCIe SATA host adapter for the Mac Pro.

We ran a five bay PM enclosure (filled with Hitachi 7K500s) on our Mac Pro with a using the Sonnet E4P host adapter (based on a Marvell chipset). We got 240MB/s READ, 216MB/s WRITE. We moved the same enclosure to a MacBook Pro with an ExpressCard SATA host adapter (based on the Silicon Image 3132 chipset): 125MB/s READ, 111MB/s WRITE. Hopefully future improvements in the chipset and/or firmware will overcome this speed limit and MacBook Pro owners can experience true joy when they connect a four or five drive array to their ExpressCard.

[Brian Spatz]

Thanks Steve for pointing out that information!

Firmtek claims "1.5Gbps and 3.0Gbps data transfer rates; compatible with SATA-I/1.5Gbps or SATA-II/3.0Gbps hard disk drives."

Their site doesn't mention any chipset limitations. I'm assuming they mean that there isn't an issue with their cards' ability to obtain high transfer rates, it's a Macbook Pro issue??

Even then, if I only plan to be editing HDV footage, do I really need 3Gbps?!?! lol. I'm pretty sure firewire 800 will be plenty fast. From what I understand, the typical data rate for HDV is only slightly over 3.5Mbps. But of course it doesn't hurt to have the most efficient setup.