[G4] eSATA external drive fails to mount ?

[Frank Dutra]

>Any ideas why or what I might try to make this work?
>
>It works just fine with FW800 connections.

May have something to do with the chipset of your card or 
compatibility issues with Sata  III standards,,, check the detailed 
specs on your drive model from the manufacturer.

I'm running 2 - 2 tb internal sata drives via a  Seritek 1s2 pci card 
on my stock dual 450 mhz Mystic, and have been using sata drives for 
the past 3-4  yrs. I've also used a Seritek 4 port (2 internal and 2 
external) pci/pci extreme card with good results except that it 
often knocked out my ata bus (drives spin up but won't mount). I'm 
back to the 2 internal port card with a Voyager external box, which 
works (boots) but is noticeably slower using the firewire 400 
ports,,, never tried it with sata to sata using the 4 port card.

I believe your internal 100 htz bus will limit your file transfer 
speed, though that may be different with your sonnet upgrade. I stuck 
the 2 internal drives in a sled and have them laying on top of 
optical drive and haven't had any problems with heat though I don't 
use the DVD drive very often. You would need a molex power plug to 
sata converter and can steal the power from the zip drive slot/plug.

I would stay with the older Sata I/II  standards, I recently bought a 
3 tb WD drive with Sata III
and have been unable to format it. WD says it will work in Tiger, but 
I'm running PPC Tiger which may be the problem, or maybe the chipset 
on the card. Disk Utility sees the drive and knows it is a 3 tb so I 
don't think the 3 tb size is the problem,,, I plan on formatting it 
on another computer, and install Snow Leopard server on it for the 
unavoidable, dreaded upgrade, using it for backups and media files. 
Perhaps it would be fine once formatted.

My Sata set up works fine with Tiger, don't know about Panther or Leopard.

Frank
-- 
Frank Dutra

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