MP won't see Caldigit esata card

Hi MsB,

Have you checked out this page?
http://www.caldigit.com/support.asp

I have that card, I can't remember why I uninstalled it though. Does it work ok regardless of what it says about drivers being there or not being there?

I still can't remember why I took out that card... maybe because like a few others I bought (E2P for one) it wouldn't work from the get go.
Caldigit hopefully gets back to you soon, let me know what they say.

I suggest you look into Silicon image 3132 chipset driver which is what caldigit is using. They simply relabel the chipset and prtend it is their technology.

The fasta-2e does not support snow leopard in 64 bit mode.
In fact, you can get any silicon image chipset card for Mac at 25 dollars range.
Besides, you can also find more power RAID solution using latest Intel Chipset IOP 348 at much lower price.
or example, Areca, 1680, High Point 4322 and more. CalDigit products are way over price compares to the same quality level that other vendors can provide.

That's an interesting point. When I installed SL that was something SL put in a special folder as unusable. I thought it was from Firmtek at the time, but now i'm not so sure.

That's an interesting point. When I installed SL that was something SL put in a special folder as unusable. I thought it was from Firmtek at the time, but now i'm not so sure.

Hi,
The Snow Leopard installation process does not remove the FirmTek driver. If you install the new FirmTek Snow Leopard compatible 5.4.1 driver it will automatically replace the previous driver with the new 5.4.1 version. http://www.firmtek.com/news/541/

However, the Snow Leopard installation process does seem to remove most versions of the standard Silicon Image drivers and place them in a folder named incompatible. It did the same with my early version of Parallels.

It was from Firmtek or Caldigit. It was something like 3132, along with something that corresponded with that, two items.

OMGosh, I didn't realize Mr. Firmtek himself was addressing me. I feel rather special now. Since I never got a response from your Customer Service, maybe you can tell me why I bought the En2 and the 2-port Seritek card only to have it not work with my Velociraptors, in fact almost destroying them. Sorry, bud, not using your products again.

MsB, I'm of the mind that it will only work in 32 bit mode. But as we both know it won't even do that. If I remember right though, I thought I ran across something that said the Sonnet drivers might get it to work. I don't know what risks there are to doing that, I can't imagine they would be to great though, and they can always be uninstalled. I'm tired of putting junk in my Mac though, you'd have to try it to see.
I still can't get over buying an E2P advertised to work in the Mac Pro, then getting it and seeing the tiny label which said, "Not for 09 Mac Pros". Eesh.
My E4P has been flawless though. And HighPoint cards, while really expensive, are very interesting to me. I especially like the bootability.
Curious though, have you ever seen this? You'd have to take out your DVD drive and put it in an external to use both ports there, but it seems a very cool and inexpensive option. All native too so anything attached to them would be bootable to. Look for the asterisk.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MPQXES2/

omg? feel special so... have you seen footnotes on products where "doesn't support"? some people ignore those. Some think, "not for me."

I have a saying, "you can never do too much research, and you'll never know the questions you needed or should have asked until afterwards."

We, here, these forums, knew about the three models of VelociRaptor and was brought to my attention on Barefeats. Blame WD for putting out such a "non-standard" drive, or customers for installing them maybe.

But it is hard to know the 'face' behind a user_ID.

Didn't you fall for the E2P as well? No, there were no footnotes at that time on the page I ordered from. I see that OWC doesn't even carry that card anymore, while Sonnet has "updated" their footnotes.

Research is of course something absolutely necessary before one buys most anything. I'm just sorry that now I and MsBeezy are going to be the source of info for others. Well, sorry for ourselves anyway, I'm glad we can warn others of our experiences. Now at least MP '09 owners know two cards to stay away from.

Yes, we here know now of the different models of VRs, but even though they had been out for quite awhile, the Firmtek CS person said they had never tested any of them. That is not a company I believe that prides itself on being on the cutting edge. What should have gave me pause though is that neither card was designed for MPs, just for Power Macs. Apparently both companies thought they could graft on some changes and see how it went. As we know now, it went poorly. And that's the risk that reactive, rather than proactive, companies make. The result for me is that I won't touch a Firmtek product again.

I don't really know who that was, but if it was a spokesman for Firmtek, it was telling how many posts they've made here. Not many at all.

If I get Msbeezy's gist, I tend to agree with him. The computer industry has it's own versions of paid commercial types, companies that promise everything but never quite deliver on their word. I also happen to know what the strategy is behind those paid commercials. They make their money because people find it too much trouble to send anything back. That's my case at least with these cards, I just toss them aside when they don't work since they didn't cost that much in the first place. But I should have sent them back.

All in all I would say that research is vital, but it has to be accompanied by a wary vigilance. One almost has to expect that something will not work. That said I still like Sonnet, even though according to them the E2P will never be updated to work on 09's.
I'm sorry for what MsB related about Highpoint though, yet another company to be wary of.