macnn
06/24/2008, 3:30pm, EDT
Tuesday, June 24th
Newertech announces eSATA cable for Mac Pro
Newer Technology has announced its first eSATA Extender Cable, which is compatible with all Mac Pro models. The cable connects to the two unused internal Mac Pro SATA ports and replicates them in a PCI slot, allowing users to use two external eSATA connections. The cable is engineered as a "Perfect Fit Solution" enabling six total SATA drives to access the motherboard. NewerTech's eSATA Extender Cable costs $25 and is available now.
The cable comes with a full-color installation guide and is compatible with all Mac Pros that have shipped since 2006, including 8-Core models. Because it utilizes two extra SATA ports on the motherboard, it does not consume any PCI bandwidth.
Filed under: upgrades/storage
Other story tags: Mac Pro, eSATA, cable
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New?????
I bought this very same cable from them last year. It doesn't seem plausible they're announcing this again as a new product. Weird.
highway robbery
This isn't some innovative new product. PC mobo manufacturers bundle these for free and you can pick some up on eBay for $5 rather than $25.
My review of this product
I went ahead and purchased the Newer Tech eSATA extender, and actually went through the entire process to the book. Besides one troublesome screw that kept falling during the reassembly, it was really pretty easy and quick, plus I learned a lot about the innards of my early 2008 Mac Pro.
Now for the bad news. My Mac crashes every time I try to start it connected to a fairly new LaCie external (with current firmware). The drive is powered on before the computer (as it has to be), and the drive works flawlessly with FW400. But no luck with the eSATA connection.
I figured I would call the Newer Tech support line, and was very disappointed with the support. Newer Tech treats the product as cable, not an eSATA solution (too bad all the articles make you think of this product as a solution). So as long as the cable is functioning, that's where Newer Tech ends the tech support. Of course, Apple does not support the use of these SATA ports, so there is no turning to Apple for advice, or having any reason to assume they might fix any issues on their end. And how can you start blaming the external drive manufacturer, when you're trying to connect their drive to a full on hack, rather than an official and supported eSATA port?
Upon a little further research, there seems to be scores of people complaining on various boards about problems with eSATA and their Leopard macs (to be fair, there are also people having no problems). There's talk of various chipsets, etc used in the external drives, some of which don't work right. But it's a whole can of worms I wasn't expecting, and I don't think any of the product reviews prepare you for these types of potential roadblocks.
On top of that, I've seen a FW800 vs. eSATA speed test that showed a drive connected with eSATA was just barely faster than with FW800...
So, at this juncture, I would NOT recommend the Newer Technology extender cable to most users, unless you are very knowledgeable about eSATA and feel confident your external drives will play nice with the unsupported Apple SATA ports. I actually plan to post this review in multiple locations as a public service.