Oodelay PE-134 eSATA III 6Gbps 4 Ext Port PCI-e Host Controller for Mac/PC Port Multiplier Capable

Edit 20170208:I finally had the chance to try tinkering with it using SSDs. Performance is disappointing on SSDs. With four SSDs attached, I tried to see what I could do (not testing RAID, but just using drives in parallel). One SSD at a time could get about 500MB/s. Two on one of the SATA controllers would only reach about 600MB/s, but one on each of the SATA controllers was able to get about 800MB/s. All four SSDs at once the aggregate would only reach a bit over 1000MB/s. I'm guessing that PCIe g2 x4 to dual PCIe g2 x2 bridge under the big heatsink (the SATA controllers are the smaller chips!) has some limitations, since the same four SSDs on a decent SAS card in the same slot in the same system could easily exceed 2200MB/s.Still, not bad for my purchase intent (multiple BD burners) and definitely looks like it could keep up with an HDD on each port, but the odd performance limitation cost it a star.Original review: (was 5 stars)Since it seems nobody makes a four-channel SATA3 host that actually uses more than two PCIe lanes, the manufacturer of this card took a different approach. This card contains two two-channel SATA3 hosts, each using two PCIe lanes, and a PCIe bridge that connects four lanes to the host PC. Conceptually I like this, and the whole thing seems to operate at PCIe gen 2, so the bottleneck should not be as bad as those cards that try to get four channels on two PCIe lanes.I have not had enough opportunity to test for overall performance; I am connecting it to an external case with multiple blu-ray burners. If I get a chance to verify performance on, for example, four SSDs, I will post my results.

Plugged this into my Linux box (Ubuntu 14.04) and plugged an enclosure with an FIS based port multiplier into it. It just worked.I have not pushed to the interface limits yet as I am using mechanical drives, but I do get to the stated media speed limit of the drive, which is just over 200 MB/s. In theory this card can do much more and overall should be the fastest card out there with two PCIe 2.0 lanes per controller while most cards give you one PCIe 2.0 lane.While one may ask for PCIe 3.0, well I am just not seeing one available. My guess is most motherboards one of these SATA controllers would be integrated on would be connected to the south bridge PCIe lanes, which unless you have a Z170 board is going to be PCIe 2.0. Also there is an issue going from a target audience of integrated motherboard to expansion card format like this in that a two lane motherboard implementation is easy enough in that the south bridge will take 2 lanes for a device and you can easily setup a clock signal and such for just two lanes at a time, but an expansion slot is generally setup for 1 lane, 4 lane, 8 lane, or 16 lanes; there is no 2 lane mode and there is no two by 2 lane mode for two devices on a single card. I have heard if you have PLX chips on your board like I do you can get the independent signalling to multiple devices on the same expansion card, but most people do not have this, so this card implements its own PLX chip.

This product worked fine in my MacPro early 2008 (3,1) with Mac OS 10.11.6.I however discovered it was not completely compatible with my MediaSonic ProBoxes, of which I had 6. It worked fine if the devices were turned on at boot time, but if not, or were turned off after boot, were inaccessible until another boot.I worked with Mediasonic to get to the bottom of the problem and they determined the chipset used in this card was incompatible with the chipset in the MediaSonic. I spoke to the Oodelay support staff and even after the several months of Mediasonic testing were willing to allow me to exchange it for another card in their product line which was compatible (NewerTech MaxPower eSata PCI card).It was a pleasure to work with Oodelay in getting a satisfactory result as they went the extra mile for customer satisfaction.

Card works fine from a hardware point of view. But using the Microsoft AHCI drivers causes drives to drop under heavy load. But since this card uses an Asmedia 106x chipset. You can install the drivers for that chipset which can be found on the internet. In my case it was Win10 64bit. Once I googled the drivers and installed the latest Asmedia driver. The drive no longer dropped under heavy load. So far its working will update if it decides to drop with the asmedia drivers.

I'll admit to being wary of spending $120 with a company I'd never heard of, but I got the card a couple of days ago, plugged it into my Mac, and plugged in my FirmTech 2-drive extension enclosure (which requires hot-swap) , and my MediaSonic Port-Multiplied 4-drive enclosure, and everything 'just worked.'I'm delighted, and if my experience is any guide, I'd easily recommend this card.

Performance is decent AFAICT. Had no problems with setting it up. Popped in the card and everything was recognized by the BIOS, Linux, and Windows.

Came in the mail quickly and safely packaged. I have a MAC PRO tower and this card works with my three Voyager Q drive adapters. It works with El Capitan OS (my old card stopped when I upgraded to El Capitan).

I've had this for about 6 months now and haven't had any problems with it. In fact I would say it works excellent on my classic Mac Pro. Great card, very stable, and runs on OSX native drivers.