Sonnet's Tempo SATA Express 34 ushers in a new level of higher disk performance capability for the mobile professional. Whether you capture and edit video content in the field, the studio, or home, Tempo SATA Express 34 sets the bar high for mobile storage products.The Tempo SATA Express 34 controller has two external, 3Gb/s, SATA II ports, and plugs directly into a MacBook Pro (15" or 17") or Windows notebooks with an ExpressCard/54 or ExpressCard/34 slot.Imagine connecting up to 10 drives for high-performance applications, such as Apple's Final Cut Pro. With two external SATA drives attached in a RAID 0 array, the Tempo SATA Express 34 can typically achieve sustained disk write and read speeds of 100 and 110 MB/sec, respectively, which is about three times as fast as USB 2.0 or FireWire connections to the same drive setup.Offering native SATA speed in a compact mobile package, Sonnet's Tempo SATA Express 34 redefines the definition of disk speed for the creative person on-the-go.
Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
2 Port Tempo Sata Express34 Card, August 12, 2008
By
Paramjit DhesiHighly recommended!
I have a Asus F3Sv-x1 laptop which I used this card for. I (without checking) thought I needed an express34 card but in reality this laptop supports an express34 and express54. The sata card is fast. It leaves usb 2.0/firewire in the dust. I was shocked out fast files/folders were copied from external HD to laptop via expresscard. highly recommend for copying large files.
This device supports my mac as well (double bonus).
Con - expensive.
Pro - supports high transfer speeds; supports both mac/pc
Finder hangs under Tiger and Leopard with port multipler enclosures, May 10, 2008
By
San FranI originally bought this with the Sonnet Fusion 500P 5BAY Sata Enclosure back in July 2007. Doing file copies between a single drive and a two-disk raid 0 in the Fusion 500P bay would result in consistent finder hangs, requiring hard reboot. I also managed to hang finder copies using transfers between two disks. This was with a 2007 Macbook Pro 2.4GHz running Tiger. The espress34 card seemed to work ok with a two disk enclosure (Firmtek SeriTek/1EN2 and SeriTek/2EN2). I returned the Fusion 500P and used the espress34 card with my dual bay enclosures.
The last few months I have been using the card with the Firmtek SeriTek/5PM. This seemed to be ok unless I was doing parallel finder copies, in which case it would hang again. Then I obtained a new Samsung 1T drive (the disk enclosure contains WD 1T drives, Samsung 500/250 drives and Seagate 750G drives). Doing a disk copy between any drive and the new Samsung would result in the usual finder hang, requiring a hard reboot. Doing copies between data on the five bay enclosure and a two bay enclosure containing the Samsung disk worked perfectly. Again, this was with the Macbook Pro running Tiger. So, I decided to upgrade to Leopard 10.5.2; same problem, hang, when copying between drives on the five bay enclosure. The driver is the "latest" one from the Sonnet website (dated 3/6/2007, v1.1.9).
Hence, this card is not reliable when using port multiplier enclosures.
I would not recommended this card for use in port multipler enclosures.
Works w/ Leopard and Lacie d2 Quadra, January 2, 2008
By
Sarah Kozloff (Katonah, NY USA)
Haven't had much time to check speed, but seems to be one of the only cards out right now that will support a Lacie drive on Leopard 10.5.1 Good luck
Works as promised, but nothing extra, November 29, 2007
By
K. Gajjar (Johannesburg, South Africa)
Bought this card to use with my Macbook Pro to see if I could wring any more performance out of my drives using eSATA rather than Firewire800. Target device was a Lacie Quadra d500. Performance was slightly improved in sequential performance, but close to nothing in random reads and/or writes, which is more typical of average usage.
Drivers work fine in both Leopard and Tiger, but the continuously running background monitoring program is a little klunky in terms of design; why run if the card isn't present ? Also, the card doesn't come with a carry case, making storage when not in use difficult - I ended up hacking the original packaging and using that.
In summary, the card delivers what it says - eSATA connectivity via ExpressCard34. Is it significantly faster than Firewire 800 ? Not on a 7200RPM 2.5" drive, or a 10000RPM 3.5" drive, no, it isn't.
Buy this card if you don't have Firewire800 and/or you want to ensure that you can always connect to storage.
For the price, I honestly expected more.
Unbelievable performance, October 18, 2007
By
DGC (USA)
Rarely do compute gizmo's give anything close to "theoretical" perfomance. THIS DID.
I needed to migrate 35Gb of video and assets from a MacBookPro internal Seagate 200Gb/7200 SATA drive to an external Seagate 750Gb/7200 eSATA drive in a Fusion 500P hot swap (unRAIDED) drive cage via a multiport connection. It worked flawlessly and ... did I mention the performance? I was getting so darn close to the 300Mb/sec that it was irrelevant timing. Awesome for laptop external storage solution!!!
