OWC to offer eSATA upgrade kit for new top-of-the-line iMac

Prominent Mac vendor, OtherWorld Computing, said Friday on its blog that the company will offer an eSATA “interface solution” for the 27-inch iMac that was announced this week by Apple. The details such as pricing and scope have yet to be finalized.

The company said it expects to offer an upgrade service for the new iMac, including solid-state drives and memory upgrades.

Complete details on how you can have this high performance interface added to your iMac by OWC will be rolled out in the next several days. In the meantime, look for a possible news release later today on an entire turnkey upgrade program for the 27â³ iMac. Now, adding an SSD to the new iMac wonât just be limited to an overpriced, under-performing factory option. And youâll have more memory options at lower cost than factory. Multiple wins across the board for what will amount to a far superior iMac than what you can configure from the factory.

The company must expect that some owners of the 27-inch model will work on video and on its iMac performance page, Apple is promoting Final Cut video editing for these systems. Customers can pick between a 2.8-GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor, and the 2.93GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor. The systems can support up to 16GB of RAM.

OWC sells a number of single hard drives and RAID systems that offer an eSATA interface.

(Note: I own a OWC eSATA drive that I purchased several years ago, which is connected to my MacBook Pro via an ExpressCard/34 adapter card.)

OWC to offer eSATA upgrade for new top-of-the-line iMac

Prominent Mac vendor, OtherWorld Computing, said Friday on its blog that the company will offer an eSATA “interface solution” for the 27-inch iMac that was announced this week by Apple. The details of the program such as pricing and scope have yet to be finalized.

The company said it expects to offer an upgrade service for the new iMac, including solid-state drives and memory upgrades.

Complete details on how you can have this high performance interface added to your iMac by OWC will be rolled out in the next several days. In the meantime, look for a possible news release later today on an entire turnkey upgrade program for the 27â³ iMac. Now, adding an SSD to the new iMac wonât just be limited to an overpriced, under-performing factory option. And youâll have more memory options at lower cost than factory. Multiple wins across the board for what will amount to a far superior iMac than what you can configure from the factory.

The company must expect that some owners of the 27-inch model will work on video and on its iMac performance page, Apple is promoting Final Cut video editing for these systems. Customers can pick between a 2.8-GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor, and the 2.93GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor. The systems can support up to 16GB of RAM.

OWC sells a number of single hard drives and RAID systems that offer an eSATA interface.

(Note: I own a OWC eSATA drive that I purchased several years ago, which is connected to my MacBook Pro via an ExpressCard/34 adapter card.)

June 6 in LEM history

00: A love of simple elegance - Always have a backup plan - 01: From MacPaint to JPEG - 02: Carbon Copy Cloner - 5 free online tools - 03: Macs more flexible, more friendly than PCs - Simulating space flight on a Mac - Internet sharing - 05: Apple going Intel - XLR8 MAChSpeed Control 3.4 squeezes top performance from Macs - 1990-92: The Windows threat - 06: Application switchers for the classic Mac OS - 07: June 2007 MacBook Pro value equation - Lisa's DNA all over modern computing - A whisper quiet notebook drive
Read more [Low End Mac]

MBP Shootout: eSATA adapter cards

Apple and storage vendors haven’t made the use of eSATA easy on the MacBook Pro line. The first rounds of adapter cards had driver and booting issues that confused users and broke with successive OS updates. And a year ago, Apple isolated the ExpressCard/34 slot to its 17-inch pro notebook. However, a recent review on Lloyd Chambersâ Mac Performance Guide for Digital Photographers & Performance Addicts site shows that the latest generation of adapters may prove a winner.

Chambers reviewed 3 cards: Sonnet’s Tempo SATA Edge card  and 2-port Tempo SATA Pro, and Other World Computing’s Slim ExpressCard to eSATA Adapter.

Two of the cards offer a new look to these adapters, an “edge” or “slim” design that sits flush against the side of the MacBook Pro case. This is a very nice option for customers only needing one port. The older style cards stuck out quite a bit, even the ones with only a single port, and I always remove mine before putting my MBP in a sleeve.

The OWC adapter is based on the new JMicron JMB360 chipset, which appears to fix a number of the difficulties that have bothered previous eSATA cards: it doesn’t require any additional drivers or software, and you can boot from it with any MBP that has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor or better. (Sadly, that excludes my first-gen MBP, sniff …) It also supports hot swapping, meaning you can remove a drive without shutting down, which was a problem with some of the cards on the market.

Chambers points out that potential buyers of an MBP who work with demanding digital content applications, such as video, should take a look at eSATA. It’s much faster than FireWire 800 and USB 2.0.

Performance with any of these cards is far better than with Firewire 800, something which should be kept in mind when purchasing a MacBook Pro, since only the 17″ model has the ExpressCard/34 slot (certain prior generation 15″ models also have the ExpressCard/34 slot).

Still, all of these cards are somewhat disappointing, because their best performance is only 45 - 70 percent of what can be had with the fastest peripherals on the Mac Pro. This is the fault of the MacBook Pro with its low bandwidth ExpressCard/34 slot.

I am sorry to see the ExpressCard/34 slot removed from the 15-inch MacBook Pros, although I understand the positioning.

At the same time, there have been plenty of trouble and disappointment with eSATA cards and drives from multiple vendors following the introduction of ExpressCard/34 on the first MacBook Pro. First of all, to my knowledge, none of the first-gen Core Duo-based MBPs could boot from the connected eSATA drives with an eSATA card, a capability that was assumed from Mac external storage devices (or at least I certainly assumed it).

In addition, many adapters and drivers presented a very non-Mac user experience. For example, adapters  based on Silicon Image’s SiI3132 chipset require users to dismount the card using a Finder Menubar icon even when all mounted volumes on the external drive have been ejected (this OEM adapter was offered by various storage vendors). Worse, many drivers broke with the release of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

The excellent Accelerate Your Mac site has tracked this issue from the beginning and offers a wide range of eSATA reviews. In Feb., the site pointed to Silicon Image’s release of updated, “beta” BASE drivers that are compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit Snow Leopard installs.

I have installed these drivers and they work on my machine (again, pointing out that my Mac can’t boot from the eSATA drive).

SI was quick to remind customers that as an OEM vendor, it doesn’t support these drivers in a note to end users on its software download page:

Silicon Image designs and develops chips for manufacturers. These manufacturers develop their own drivers, firmware and software for their boards. Silicon Image does not have information or access to the Drivers, Software or boards that these manufacturers create and sell. We typically assist these manufacturers when they have problems with our chips. End-Users should contact product manufacturer of the board for technical support.

Of course, few of the companies selling these cards were developing drivers, firmware or software. They just sold them with the SI drivers, which then broke again and again.

The latest generation of eSATA cards from most vendors have fixed the issues. However, before purchasing any of them, make sure that they can boot from your MacBook Pro model. In addition, I suggest that the purchase of external storage offering a range of bootable connectivity interfaces beyond eSATA, such as USB 2.0 and FireWire 800. Just in case.

Sonnet offers Fusion ‘Fibre-for-4’ package

Posted by Dennis Sellers

Sonnet Technologies has announced the availability of the Fusion Fibre-for-4 package, which offers the Fusion RX1600Fibre rackmount 16-drive RAID 6 Fibre Channel (FC) shared storage system with a 4-port 8Gb FC interface, four 1-port 8Gb Fibre Channel PCIe host adapter cards, four fiber optic cables, and a 4-seat Tiger Technology metaSAN...

Apple 512 GB SSD is a Toshiba H2

Thanks to Xlr8Yourmac, we now know that the SSD of 512 GB available from the Apple Store as a BTO for MacBook Pro.

This is a Toshiba HG2, if it does not offer the top notch performance levels shown by other manufacturers, it is a reliable model and offer a record storage space for a SSD; most likely the reasons Apple shows it.

Towards Support for TRIM Function on Mac OS X!?

A reader from Xlr8yourmac installed in its MacBook Pro 2010 a Intel SSD. When looking at the system info, his SSD showed interesting details:

For the first time in Mac OS X, there is a mention of the TRIM support, however, for an unknown reason it is not activated on this SSD while this model support it. It is possible than Apple decided to implement the TRIM function only for the SSD available from the Apple Store as a BTO. If this is the case, than we should find a way to activate this function even with third party SSD.

Sonnet adds eSATA card for Mac and Windows

The installed card fits even with side of the the laptop

Sonnet Technologies has released the Tempo SATA Edge ExpressCard/34, an eSATA card for laptops. The company says that this card is so small that it can be left inside a notebook computer’s ExpressCard/34 slot even when not in use. The installed card fits even with side of the the laptop.

Sonnet's Tempo SATA Edge adds eSATA to MacBook Pro

Sonnet Technologies released the Tempo SATA Edge ExpressCard/34, an eSATA card for laptops.


Read more [Macworld]

New: Tempo SATA Edge ExpressCard/34

Sonnet Technologies's Tempo SATA Edge ExpressCard/34 is a new eSATA adapter that fits completely inside the ExpressCard/34 slot, its connector edge flush with the edge of the slot.
Read more [MacInTouch]