Glyph EC2 PCI Express One Lane Two Port eSATA Adapter Card

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Get the most out of your GT 050Q

The EC2 is an eSATA card capable of delivering higher bandwidth than FireWire can, up to 125MB/s on each of it's eSATA connections. It's a 3Gbps/port SATA II card which uses a PCIe slot in your computer. Using eSATA, copy speeds will increase significantly when moving large amounts of data from one drive to another. Typically, a GT 050Q can transfer around 70MB/s when connected via FireWire 800. If connected to our EC2 card, speeds of over 110MB/s are easily attainable using the same drive. Higher bandwidth is quite handy when you need to backup the entire contents of your 1.5TB GT 050Q drive. Best of all, it's quite affordable and ships with a 1-meter eSATA cable.

With your audio applications

Audio applications also work well using our EC2 card. We've seen slightly better track-count performance using a GT 050Q connected via eSATA compared to FireWire 800. It's only slightly better becuase the drive itself is the limiting factor, not the speed of the bus. A single disk spindle can only play so many audio tracks with edits, so using a faster connection to the drive doesn't deliver a significant increase in audio tracks. However, some FireWire-based audio interfaces and external processors don't play well with FireWire drives on the same bus, so connecting your drive via eSATA makes lots of sense. Especially when you need the fastest speed possible for storage and the best reliability for your audio interface.

With your video applications

In a video capture and editing environment, the highest bandwidth possible is needed. The EC2 maximizes the connection to your GT 050Q delivering over 100MB/s of sustained transfer.

Advanced Features

The EC2 supports all Serial ATA II features, including 3.0 Gbps SATA II transfer speeds, Native Command Queuing, port multipliers with FIS-based switching, programmable output signal swing strengths for longer external cables or extended backplanes, hot plugging, enclosure management and ATAPI device support.

In combination with Glyph Products

The EC2 is designed to be used with single-drive enclosures such as the GT 050Q. The HighPoint card is the best match for high-performance RAID enclosures holding two or more drives, such as the GT 062E and ForteRAID.

Driver Download

You’ll need to install the driver for the Silicon Image 3132 chip, which is the chip on the EC2 card. You can either download the correct driver, or you can install the driver from the CD that came with your EC2 card. Downloading the driver may be safest since Silicon Image may release new drivers since you bought your card. Make sure to download the BASE driver, not the SATARAID5 driver.

Specifications

Glyph part number

EC2

External Interface

Two 3Gb/sec eSATA external ports

Bus Interface

One-lane PCI Express

Chipset

Silicon Image SiI3132

Sustained transfer rate

125MB/s per eSATA port

Advanced Features

Supports Native Command Queuing
Supports port multipliers with FIS-based switching
Supports up to 10 hard disks using port multipliers
Supports hot plugging of hard drives under Mac OS X
RoHS Compliant

Driver Download

Download the driver for the Silicon Image 3132 chip, which is the chip on the EC2 card. You can either download the correct driver, or you can install the driver from the CD that came with your EC2 card. Downloading the driver may be safest since Silicon Image may release new drivers since you bought your card. Make sure to download the BASE driver, not the SATARAID5 driver.