[Eden Aurora]

I keep reading about eSATA connections on external hard drives.
Is this the fastest connection available? How does it compare to Firewire 800?

What wire do i need to connect a eSATA hard drive to my Mac Pro? What port am i suppose to be using? Apple computes don't have an eSATA port built in.

I'm confused, need help.

[reader50]

You need a PCIe SATA card. You can get them from a few people, like Other World Computing or newegg. Watch the system and OS compatibility, especially on cards from Newegg. In particular, cards based on Silicon Image chipsets do not work after 10.5.2 unless the manufacturer supplies custom firmware (like Firmtek does). The SI-supplied drivers & firmware mess up in the later OS versions.

If you want to use multi-drive enclosures, make sure to get a card that supports Port Multiplier. Most compatible cards will not boot a Mac - they require a driver to load after boot starts. A few do support booting - check the descriptions.

[Simon]

eSATA will be the fastest because it's usually (with very few exceptions) the native interface the HDD uses (SATA).

When you use something like FW or USB, a bridge is required that basically 'translates' between the FW or USB protocol and SATA. No matter how good that bridge chipset is, it can only reduce throughput. And then there's the bus throughput itself. eSATA/SATA delivers up to 3 Gbps. FW800 is loads faster than USB2 or FW400, but it's still 'only' 800 Mbps. Of course those are theoretical values, actual throughput is usually a bit lower. Plus the controller in your Mac can further limit that rate as we've all seen with the theoretical 480Mbps we should get from USB2.

If you take a fast HDD or SSD such a connection can easily limit your throughput. With eSATA you basically connect the HDD's SATA interface directly to the SATA interface in your I/O controller. It's basically the most direct and bottleneck-free connection method you can chose. That said, if the device you're attaching only does 400 Mbps ("green" HDDs, older/cheaper disks) FW800 could be sufficient.

Note also that a SATA connection is usually cheaper than a decent FW800 case. There are two free SATA ports in your MP. You can route a SATA-eSATA cable out the back if you want to be 'cheap'. eSATA docks go for as little as ~$20.

[Eden Aurora]

Apple doesn't sell one in it's Mac Pro's? BTO ?
I see that Apple sells a Fibre Channel Card. What is this?

[P]

Fibre Channel is a different storage interface. They fill slightly different roles - FC is really a sort of network interface for storage, high-end stuff.

[bld44]

The Mac Pro indeed does has two eSATA ports on the logic board that aren't used. They are just hard to get to. You can access them with an eSATA extender such as this:
NewerTech� eSATA Extender Cable

Keep in mind that's not hot swappable, so you've got to restart if you turn on/plugin a drive and want it to be recognized by the OS. If you get a PCIe eSATA card it should be hot swappable, so you won't have to restart if you turn on/off an external drive.

I recently bought this card and have been very happy with it. It appears they just made the 2 port version Snow Leopard compatible. Sonnet Tech also has some other versions (ie a 4 port) that are very nice cards.
Sonnet Online Store