[l008com]

Does anyone know how this feature works? I've read conflicting info in various places. Some say the 5 ports you get all run at full speed and don't interfere with each other. Other sources say they do slow each other down when they're all running at the same time. I'm building a drive tower and will 99% of the time be using all drives at the same time, though they will be 52X CD ROM drives so the top speeds won't be as fast as a hard drive.

Also is port multiplication a standard thing? Should I expect most eSata cards to have it? Or only ones that specifically mention it?

Also, will a non-mac eSata PCI card work in a Mac? I don't expect it will be bootable, but I don't need to boot. As I said I just need to read from a lot of CD ROM drives at once.

[mduell]

eSATA with port multiplication uses a single SATA connection (either 1.5 or 3.0Gbps) as the interconnect, so you get 150MBps or 300MBps, not five times that. 52X CD is about what, 6 or 7 MBps, so you're not going to face any crunch there.

Port multiplication is standardized (so different companies products will work together), but not standard in the sense that all eSATA devices support it (most don't). If a device has it, they will mention it.

If a card doesn't advertise Mac compatibility, it probably won't work under OS X; should still work under Windows, though. You may find a card that doesn't advertise Mac compatibility that works with drivers from another card that does, but there's no guarantee there.

* There are some SATA port multiplier products that use Infiniband for the interconnect for better performance/distance, but they're ungodly expensive.