bobross Posted April 20, 2010 Share Posted April 20, 2010 I have a Thermaltake eSATA HD dock. When I put my SL disk in, it hangs during boot. If I connect via internal MoBo SATA it boots fine. Any ideas on how to get the eSATA dock working? cheers, Bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shoarthing Posted April 21, 2010 Share Posted April 21, 2010 I have a Thermaltake eSATA HD dock. When I put my SL disk in, it hangs during boot. If I connect via internal MoBo SATA it boots fine. Any ideas on how to get the eSATA dock working? cheers, Bob . . . eSATA is a non-Apple interface, so far. I suspect it will never be used in Macs/Macbooks - Firewire800 is fine for now, tho' a slight bottleneck; & future models will connect to fast external storage via USB3. The 'driver' used for eSATA is Apple's generic AHCI one, & this has to cope with differences in mainboard or plugin eSATA controllers, then differences in the many makes of aSATA bridge-chips [ie the one in your dock]. This has simply never got sorted out: in the world I know about - RAID boxes attached to Mac Pros & Macbook Pros for media work - eSATA solutions only work properly when you buy all the recommended/tested links in the chain: ie for a Macbook Pro with an expresscard34 slot, you get a card with a specific bridge-chip, then this connects to a RAID-box [or other docking device] again using a specific & tested bridge-chip & so on. Sorry; but this neat widget of yours is likely to be more hassle than it is worth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobross Posted April 21, 2010 Author Share Posted April 21, 2010 . . . eSATA is a non-Apple interface, so far. I suspect it will never be used in Macs/Macbooks - Firewire800 is fine for now, tho' a slight bottleneck; & future models will connect to fast external storage via USB3. The 'driver' used for eSATA is Apple's generic AHCI one, & this has to cope with differences in mainboard or plugin eSATA controllers, then differences in the many makes of aSATA bridge-chips [ie the one in your dock]. This has simply never got sorted out: in the world I know about - RAID boxes attached to Mac Pros & Macbook Pros for media work - eSATA solutions only work properly when you buy all the recommended/tested links in the chain: ie for a Macbook Pro with an expresscard34 slot, you get a card with a specific bridge-chip, then this connects to a RAID-box [or other docking device] again using a specific & tested bridge-chip & so on. Sorry; but this neat widget of yours is likely to be more hassle than it is worth. Thanks for the info! I actually got it working. The nice people at Thermaltake have also included a USB 2.0 port. I've successfully booted OSX SL off the dock! BTW these docks are very handy, highly recommended! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shoarthing Posted April 22, 2010 Share Posted April 22, 2010 Thanks for the info! I actually got it working. The nice people at Thermaltake have also included a USB 2.0 port. I've successfully booted OSX SL off the dock! BTW these docks are very handy, highly recommended! . . o yes, USB2 will always work, if sloooowly . . glad you have it sorted. For the last coupla years I have been using a slightly more universal widget for bare drives: this 'ere geek-tool . . . if I were to get a dock like yours right now, would try to find an affordable one (this is not)with a Firewire800 connection . . but USB3 will doubtless solve all these hassles for a good few years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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