New Imac supports esata...sort of.

[Marcus V Warner]

So I ran across this the other day.. http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/turnkey/iMac_2010_27

Basically you can now have a fully functioning esata port on your imac now. Everyone I know that has ACTUALLY used the i7 imacs says it works very well with red footage but the one legitimate complaint is no esata.

So my question to those who are not simply irrationally hating on the towers little brother is this along with the new 2.93 i7 imac a game changer?

I would be interested to hear more experiences and thoughts from people whom have actually used last years i7.

I personally only use a lowly line skipping canon and only have personally worked with 1080p footage but am in line to pick up a Red this year.

Thanks.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Looks like it should work just fine. Obviously it will void the Apple warranty to do OWC's modification since they make a little cut-out for the eSATA connector on the bottom of the unit.

Apple has placed an additional SATA header in the new 27" systems for that 2.5" SSD bay, so if you're not using both the 2.5" bay or the internal 3.5", you can pipe one of them out to an external port. I was planning on buying an iMac for a new family computer sometime soon here, but I wasn't too impressed with the update overall, so don't know if I will. But cracking it open to do a mod like this was one of the first things I was thinking of doing.

The only potential issue I see here is that the SATA headers in the system and their related EFI support and drivers don't designate them as full-funciton eSATA ports. Or at least that is the case on the previous revisions. Typically this makes it somewhat sketchy for true hot-swap support. Electrically, it should be fine if they connector is properly grounded and you can always eject / unmount a drive... So it will work in that respect. ...Just saying that's something to think about. Not sure what potential issues could eventually arise from this. But if I got one of these iMacs, I would do this. It's the only way I could realistically use an iMac for anything productive that I do.

[Marcus V Warner]

Thanks for your thoughts Jeff... I know the issue has been brought up from time to time as to whether or not an i7 imac is suitable for working with Red footage but it seems the issue gets muddied by people whom speculate and instantly jump on the no eSATA...

So I was hoping to get some further insight as this issue seems to be resolved and get some more input from people whom have experience or actually know people whom do.

[Chris Gold]

I have a hackintosh with an esata port, and when I plug in an external drive it simply registers as an internal. It works fine untill I stop using the drive and it goes to sleep/stops spinning. At which point the computer doesn't seem to be able to tell the drive to wake up again, so I have to replug it in (it doesn't do this when plugged in over firewire or usb). I'm not sure if that is just the external HD I am using (Western Digital) or if esata has a slightly different way of communicating to drives then sata. But I'd suggest looking into it before getting the update, as I find myself reverting back to firewire 800 for the convenience.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Is this mod also possible to previous generation i7 iMac's? or only the new ones, because the additional support for an extra SSD drive?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I have a hackintosh with an esata port, and when I plug in an external drive it simply registers as an internal. It works fine untill I stop using the drive and it goes to sleep/stops spinning.

That is an EFI / driver support issue in most cases. That SATA chipset probably doesn't have OSX drivers available for it, so must be supported via BIOS and the functionality there is limited, so it isn't going to have the monitoring to enable proper hot-swap or to be able to detect if the drive goes to sleep.

This was also the case with the 2008 and earlier Mac Pro towers. They had two additional SATA ports that were unused and labeled ODD 1 & 2. They were intended for the optical bays, but Apple didn't start using SATA optical drives until very late in '08. People would route these out as eSATA ports, but the ports had issues with sleeping drives and often had problems with hot plugging or disconnecting drives. It was an EFI support issue.

Previous generation iMac systems work fine for disconnect / reconnect and hot-plug when you route the optical drive cable out of the system. However, they still don't properly monitor for drive sleep or send awaken commands if your drive has on-board power saving modes.

I can't comment on the latest iMac systems, but its probably the same way.


Is this mod also possible to previous generation i7 iMac's? or only the new ones, because the additional support for an extra SSD drive?

Only the new ones. The previous generation only have two internal SATA connections. so you would have to sacrifice your optical drive to gain another SATA port. And people do that... Remove the optical drive and feed a SATA cable out through the slot or elsewhere on the unit. Some replace the optical drive with a 2.5" HDD or SDD.

[Andrew T Foster]

Hello,

Those two ports on the Mac Pro 2008 are strange. After an EFI update over a year ago, they stopped working completely and I never tried them again - until recently.

On a whim I plugged in an internal Blu Ray burner and it popped up in OS X. The drive was able to read but wouldn't write anything. When you try to burn a DVD (wasn't going to coaster a BD-R on a test), the drive hangs and requires a reboot to pop the tray open again.

Another iMac option is to make the same modification that the fellows at OWC did from your primary drive, but remove the internal drive completely. Using an eSATA HUB (saw this recently - don't know how well it would work), you could plug your primary into this little device and another drive or two.

(WARNING: The stupid site pops up and immediately starts playing video - grrrr).

http://www.sataport.com/

Can't comment on performance until someone takes the pludge (hah sorry - arstech thing) and gives it a whirl.

I imagine that the next refresh of the iMac will include a LightPeak port (early 2011). This would really open up the iMac for access to additional hardware. We'll still need the Mac Pro for video cards, Red Rockets, etc but it'll sure be nice to have a high speed port for hardware RAID and various other bits. Perhaps even a "Red Rocket Box" that would connect via LightPeak.

Best!

ATF