eSATA PCI card

I want to use the internal sata ports with a connector from NewerTech (mounted directly to motherboard)... with an external drive which has all the usb/FW/esata ports (Lacie by Poulton design). And, I want to use this with boot camp, xp pro, SP3 with good speedy performance--eSata style.

Will it work?

No. Widows cannot use the SATA ports under the optical drives.

If not, what would be better, getting a pci-e card for esata, or a new drive without the usb/fw?

Also, Windows cannot boot from external drives.

Is it absolutely imperative that you keep the internal x3 slots raid0?
If you need the raid0 over at least 3 disks, you should just buy an external enclosure that houses 4 or more drives.

Just for example:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA5PM/

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusiond500p.html

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusion400quad.html

Then also buy the a corresponding esata card.

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/temposatae4p.html

Or firmtek esata card, etc.


It might seem like a lot of money, but if you're running a raid0 with 3 disks it's probably only helping if you do video, pro apps, etc; in which it would be a great investment for external enclosures such as the above.

Other than that, I don't see taking up 3 internal slots for raid0 for "regular" data beneficial. It's also risky.

Running the slots individually with fast drives is more flexible, safer, and good performance wise if you have the right drives (WD black, etc.)

Also, if you go the way you're explaining by using 1 internal sata slot wired to the newertech adapter, you can't keep your 3x raid0, PLUS you're wasting a precious internal slot, simply for boot ability.

If you keep your raid0 external, all your problems are solved. Plus you free up so many sata ports in the process. 3 internal slots, and you still have the 2 ODD sata ports to play with as well.

Will it work? If not, what would be better, getting a pci-e card for esata, or a new drive without the usb/fw?

Hi,
I would suggest going with the FirmTek SeriTek/5PM. It can provide performance 4x faster than FireWire 800 and 8x faster than USB when combined with the Sonnet Tempo E4P controller.

http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/5pm/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/sonnet/mac-pro/

Have fun!

A little surprised to see that the $270 Sonnet Tempo SATA E4P "does not support bootability".

No one outside of Firmtek and a few RAID cards (and not always consistent) booting from SATA has always been limited and with 4 internal drive bays, of little need, you can use FW800 for emergency.

With every OS X update almost every controller also needs new drivers so that makes it costly, a lot more R&D, and who wants to rely on something likely to break.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that it's best to put the card in slot 4, is there any logic/reasoning behind it or is it fluff?

Which card? E4P? any 4x slot is fine.

One of the patches in 10.5.7 was to help older Mac Pro with configuring slot lanes/bandwidth.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that it's best to put the card in slot 4, is there any logic/reasoning behind it or is it fluff?

Hi,
Each Apple model is different. When you read that one slot works better than another for a specific application you will need to know which Macintosh model is being discussed and what card.

For example, with the PowerMac G5 PCIe slot 4 was slightly faster than the other slots and did not share bandwidth like slots 2/3 did. The original Mac Pro 2.66 GHz had an 8x slot by default in slot 4 that could provide slightly higher performance with some controllers.

If you do not identify the Mac model discussed and the controller you may not fully understand the reason for a particular slot being recommended.