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itistoday · Aug 15, 2006, 12:42 AM

I would like to accomplish the following:

Buy an express card (not PCMCIA) that'll allow me to connect to an external SATA hard drive enclosure.

Does anyone here know of a express card that would be able to do this and is compatible with the MBPs? Also, anyone aware of a nice SATA hard drive enclosure with space for multiple hard drives?

Thanks!

mduell · Aug 15, 2006, 12:48 AM

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA2SM2E/

itistoday · Aug 15, 2006, 12:52 AM

Wow, you beat me to it, I was just looking at that too. They even have a nice promotional offer of an enclosure plus that card: http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata2ensm2e.html

Is this the best deal out there? I'll keep looking too but if anyone's already investigated this in depth I'd appreciate your comments.

ghporter · Aug 15, 2006, 07:52 AM

Neither of those solutions have a power supply-obviously they'll depend on an enclosure for the drives to provide power. Is there anything out there that DOES provide SATA power?

itistoday · Aug 15, 2006, 09:48 AM

Originally Posted by ghporter

Neither of those solutions have a power supply-obviously they'll depend on an enclosure for the drives to provide power. Is there anything out there that DOES provide SATA power?

What do you mean? The enclosure there provides power through an external power adapter, what are you looking for?

ism · Aug 15, 2006, 10:00 AM

I swear I saw a portable eSATA drive that was powered by USB. But I can't find it again now. Must have been dreaming.

ghporter · Aug 15, 2006, 10:31 AM

I have an IDE-to-USB adapter that lets me plug any IDE drive (including laptop drives-it's got both connectors) into a USB port WITHOUT installing it in an enclosure. This thing has an external power supply that provides the correct voltages for an IDE drive. I was wondering if there were such a product existed for bare SATA drives. Obviously it would be even better to (almost) natively connect a SATA drive's data port to a laptop, but for my applications (which include forensic investigations) not having to put the drive into an enclosure to power it would be much simpler.

ism · Aug 15, 2006, 10:39 AM

Would this kind of thing not do for that? http://www.wiebetech.com/products/satadock.php

mduell · Aug 15, 2006, 12:17 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

Neither of those solutions have a power supply-obviously they'll depend on an enclosure for the drives to provide power. Is there anything out there that DOES provide SATA power?

Originally Posted by ghporter

I have an IDE-to-USB adapter that lets me plug any IDE drive (including laptop drives-it's got both connectors) into a USB port WITHOUT installing it in an enclosure. This thing has an external power supply that provides the correct voltages for an IDE drive. I was wondering if there were such a product existed for bare SATA drives. Obviously it would be even better to (almost) natively connect a SATA drive's data port to a laptop, but for my applications (which include forensic investigations) not having to put the drive into an enclosure to power it would be much simpler.

The SATAdock from Wiebetech should do it, but for a tenth the price there's this, which you can use with your existing power supply (might need a $0.20 adapter to go from the big molex to the smaller (floppy) molex).

mikemako · Aug 16, 2006, 05:49 PM

I've been waiting since March for an easy-to-use external hard drive; something faster than Firewire 400 for data transfers and such.

I've looked at some of the links in this thread, but it all looks complicated. I've found bundles that might not include the hard drives, and units that require external power supplies. Is there anything for consumers yet? Just an external hard drive that will plug into my MacBook Pro's Expresscard/34 slot?

itistoday · Nov 28, 2006, 12:10 AM

I'm revisiting this thread because I'm planning on buying the MacBook Pro and eSATA drive bay solution ASAP. Is the FirmTek solution still the best one? Anyone have any other recommendations or experience with the FirmTek hardware?

Thanks!!

StewBC · 08:03 PM

Hi,

I am using the NexStar 3 external case with a 500GB WD5000YS drive. The case is USB2.0 and eSATA. The eSATA card I use is one from ST LAB (Bought it on eBay for US$40 + US$10 shipping). It's the C-240 ExpressCard. It uses the Sil3132 (Silicon Image) chip-set. I had to download the OS X driver from Silicon Image's site. I installed that and then plugged in the adapter. It all works like a charm and I am getting fantastic throughput. [I have seen reads > 50 MB/sec and read/write seems to give a sum of 60 MB/sec, around 30 MB/sec for each read/write when doing for example a Save As on a large HD movie file in iMovie HD from, and onto, the eSATA drive - All results by watching Activity Monitor -> Disk Activity]

The HD enclose is also really nice. Very quiet. I believe the NexStart 3 enclosures only work with drives up to 500GB (That's what it said on the box). The enclosure is also pretty cheap. There are some nice reviews of this enclosure, with photo's, on the net somewhere. I am very pleased with it. It can, at times, vibrate a fair bit. So much so, that I don't keep it on the desk I have my external keyboard on.

I can certainly recommend this setup.

Driver: Silicon Image - Support | Search Results
eSATA Adapter: THE STL LIMIT COMPANY - Look under Products / ExpressCard