External drive expansion

[jeffb503]

greetings,

how can i connect 6 external sata optical sata drives to my mac book pro's express sata card?

i have searched around for a solution but i haven't found anything close. most data expansion i find are pci based and are for RAIDs.

i am using lion, 10.7.2 and have an old desk top to mount & power the the drives but i need something to go from one sata (express card) to the six optical drive sata's (lots of cd's to read).

thanks,

jeffb

 

[WyomingKnott]

It depends on the express card that you have. For most, the answer is "You can't." However, some SATA controllers support port multipliers. If, and only if, the SATA controller supports port multipliers, you would connect the one SATA controller port to an external port multiplier (a powered device) and control up to five devices with it.

Here is a random example of such a product in an express card: http://www.sonnettech.com/product/temposataproexpress34.html .

Edit: This sounds like a natural case for USB 3.0. Get a USB 3.0 express card, a usb 3.0 hub, and six usb 3.0 optical drives. Probably a very expensive solution at this point in time, though.

 

[jeffb503]

It depends on the express card that you have. For most, the answer is "You can't." However, some SATA controllers support port multipliers. If, and only if, the SATA controller supports port multipliers, you would connect the one SATA controller port to an external port multiplier (a powered device) and control up to five devices with it.

Here is a random example of such a product in an express card: http://www.sonnettech.com/product/temposataproexpress34.html .

Edit: This sounds like a natural case for USB 3.0. Get a USB 3.0 express card, a usb 3.0 hub, and six usb 3.0 optical drives. Probably a very expensive solution at this point in time, though.

===

thanks, this seems to get me to where i want to go.

jeffb

 

[WyomingKnott]

Which one - the express card or USB 3.0?

 

[jeffb503]

the (special) express card with an external port multiplier