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Hey all,

I'm running a 2011 Mac Pro with a 2408, DP8, OS 10.8, etc.

Over the years I've tried adding PCI/e cards for external storage. First it was esata which was unreliable and more recently I tried USB3 which caused immense kernel panics. It's looking like my Firewire 800 ports are going, so I was tempted to try Firewire 800 next, but wanted to see if anybody has luck with the 2408 and a specific card?

Many thanks for the help!

I have a card like this, use it constantly for an internal SATA SSD without any problems... super cheap, might be worth a shot for eSATA...

Both eSATA and usb 3 cards are pretty reliable nowadays. eSATA is extremely sensitive to cable movement or bad cables.

Kernel panics shouldn't be happening unless there were incompatible drivers or firmware. I'd buy from a vendor that knows Macs such as OWC and can provide support.

Although speed will increase, especially with SSDs, you are limited to the data bus of the PCIe. With mechanical drives, the platter speed is your bottleneck - for that reason, there is no speed difference between the two protocols.

If you are using SSDs, usb 3 which has a higher potential throughput.