Newer Technology eSATA 6G card

Readers of this blog and Mac Performance Guide (PC users can benefit also) know that I’m a big fan of eSATA for performance and fast backups.

NewerTech is now shipping their 2-port MaxPower 6G PCI-Express card for the Mac Pro. It supports eSATA 6, and is backward-compatible with eSATA 3 and eSATA 1.5. At about $60, the price is a no-brainer (and there’s a $10 rebate at OWC when purchased with another qualifying product).

I plan on testing the MaxPower 6G soon, with a report to follow.

The MaxPower 6G needs no driver because it supports AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface). Plug and play, standard cables, same as eSATA 3.

Although eSATA 6 has twice the available bandwidth of eSATA 3, that’s the “size of the pipe”, not to be confused with drive speed of a single hard drive, which generally tops out around 130MB/sec today.

NOTE: this card is an entry-level card, and might not offer top performance for 6G application. Also, this card does not support port multiplication. It’s an ease-of-use and low cost offering.