eSATA & DP

[darrell]

Hi all. I've just discovered (via EM) that eSATA is a fast way to get data moving around. Does anyone have experience or info on using it with DP? I just now realized that my HD396 has only Firewire in and out. Would there still be an advantage to getting eSATA data from my Seagate FreeAgent drives to the Macbook Pro, say using a bigger DP buffer size, and then on to 896? Will going down the Firewire 400 pipe to the 896 automatically take away any advantage? If I do go eSATA, can anyone recommend a card to adapt eSATA cable to the Macbook? Can eSATA be daisy-chained, or do I need some kind of multi-in/out?

thanks in advance!

Darrell Adams

[jlward]

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo ... ess34.html

I have been using this for quite some time now. I have used it with Glyph 050Q drives (which use 1.5 Gb/s rather than the full 3 Gb/s). I now use it with full 3 Gb/s external hard drives I assembled. I generally am recording live music, and have used this to record up to 32 channels for 2-3 hours straight. Digital Performer has not been an issue. In my own experience, this set-up is better than external USB or FW drive with the MBP and MOTU interface.

[jliechty]

I've been using one of the aforementioned Sonnet eSATA ExpressCard adapters with a Sonnet Fusion 500P enclosure that currently houses four hard drives. Yes, of course it's fast, but I'm not so sure that there's a huge advantage over a Firewire 800 connection if you only have a few disks. With respect to DP's compatibility with eSATA-connected drives, I can't see how there would be any problem. The only disk-related issues I've found with DP have been with my ZFS formatted disk - and I'm not sure that such problems can be blamed on DP.