Get more speed when you need it

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 or move the entire contents of a large hard 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

The EC2 card is now included in the purchase of a ForteRAID. In a video capture and editing environment, the highest bandwidth possible is needed. The EC2 maximizes the connection to your storage, delivering over 125MB/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.

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.