Which eSATA card for PowerBook?
 

Simple question.

I'm thinking of leaving Firewire800 and going with a G-Tech G-SATA drive.

Which card should I use?

Thanks

Steve

Hi here is a link for a mac version.......

http://www.siig.com/ViewProduct.aspx?pn=SC-SAEE12-S1

I have the windows version in my XPS M1710 (Blu-Ray) notebook to hook my eSATA external and am happy with it. The only hitch I have had is probably unique to Windows: If I format and load the drive on my desktop (different controller) as NTFS under XP, Vista on the notebook wont see the data. If I format on Vista first, things loaded on either are fine on either machine

That's for the ExpressCard slot for newer MacBooks... I need a CardBus sized version which is probably the one you got... but there's no mention of OSX.

I've gotten an eSATA enclosure and desktop card from these folks:

http://www.cwol.com/serial-ata/sata-...a-products.htm

Remember, eSATA is NEW and (already) PCMCIA/cardbus is old.
Perhaps this one will work for you:

http://www.cwol.com/serial-ata/sata-...bus-2-port.htm

Yes i know, but what do you mean?

I'm familiar with two SATA Express 34 cards, one from SIIG (which I'm using right now to edit a film on with my MacBook Pro laptop and two 500G SATA drives) and the Sonnet's Tempo card (which I understand costs more, however, it offers additional support for port-multiplier enclosures, so a single SATA connection can communicate with multiple drives. With the SIIG card you're limited to two SATA devices). Is the extra trouble of using SATA drives with a laptop worth it? Yes, for two reasons: interchangeability of drives with a Power Mac G5 or Mac Pro, and drives connected via the SATA interface are faster than FireWire 800. I recently conducted a benchmark for my own amusement to confirm my experience that working with the SATA drives provides improved drive performance compared to other external drives. Oh, and there's another bonus of using SATA vs. FireWire on a Mac, and that's access to SMART reporting information (which is no available via FireWire and may help to predict some drive failures before they happen).

Re eSATA is new and CardBus is old [replaced by ExpressCard]:
"Standards" come in and go out so rapidly that it may be hard to update an older model of anything.

My policy after 20 years in IT is to set stiff requirements on what a new computer can do, load everything in a short period while all the drivers and other products are current, then hold for 3 or 4 years whithout niggling little updates that may bring down my house of cards.

Thanks David, that's great info.

The only things I need to check now is that the cardbus interface won't limit speed as opposed to the expresscard interface.. and that using an eSATA rig won;t use more CPU or system resources than FW800.... As i'm still on a PowerBook, no MacBook Pro yet....
<diving back in to google>....

Don, I completely agree with the House of Cards analogy.. unfortunately mine came down with a dodgy Lacie drive which is spurring my upgrade :)

I know that FireWire Depot offers the SeriTek/1SM2 Serial ATA PC Cardbus Card card which provides two SATA ports for your Cardbus-equipped laptop. I've not used this card, has anyone reading this thread used this card successfully? It looks like it will fit the bill and claims to be compatible with G4 Macintosh and PC notebooks with Cardbus slots.