G-Speed eS with Thunderbolt

[neils]

I have this 6 TB G-Speed eS, which works fine in a MacPro.

Now I'm trying to connect the same G-Speed eS to a MacBook Pro over Thunderbolt. For this, I've just got a Sonnet Echo Express Thunderbolt to ExpressCard adapter and a Sonnet Tempo SATA Pro ExpressCard 34 adapter.

I'm on a MacBook Pro 15" 2.2 GHz i7 with 8 GB RAM and MacOSX 10.7.4.

My connections and cables are fine and Sonnet drivers are installed. With the above connected, I can access a single external eSATA drive in an enclosure.
Even a bare drive on a eSATA dock works fine. But when I connect the G-Speed eS, all four drive lights come on, and I get four windows on my MacBook Pro telling me I've inserted a drive that Mac cannot read. With the 'Initialize', 'Ignore', and 'Eject' options.

Of course, I clicked on 'Ignore' as the G-Speed contains data.

Also, in Disk Utility I see 4 separate drives, but no RAID. The same G-Speed eS works fine and all data is visible in a MacPro with a G-Speed card. It also works fine with a MacPro with a Sonnet Tempo SATA card E4P on another system I had tried earlier.

Incidentally, The Tempo SATA Pro ExpressCard is port-multiplier aware.

Neil Sadwelkar
Yash Raj Films
Mumbai

Currently on assignment in Chicago.

[Kenny M]

Hello Neil,

Your best course of action would be to contact Sonnet as their hardware is being used to convert the eSata to Thunderbolt. It's an issue where you are seeing the hardware connection, but not the software RAID and Sonnet might have a fix or software update.

[Gene G]

Hi Neil,

Thanks for your post. I was reading over your post, and it appears you are attempting to read a RAIDset created with our 4-port card. If so, then it will only be able to be read on the MacPro that you created and are using the RAIDset on. If you would like to be able to use the G-SPEED eS on both your MacPro and MacbookPro, you will need to set it up as a software RAID in Disk Utility. First backup your data, as the procedure will wipe your data. Then open up the WEB GUI, where you are going to delete the current RAIDset. After doing this, you will set it up as 4 JBOD drives, which you will then stripe together in Disk Utility as a RAID1. After doing this you should be able to use it on both systems. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Regards,