M6600 Owners Thread

I couldn't delay anymore and bought EC eSata card which worked first time with same Lacie RAID 5 box (no problems whatsoever). It is Dell eSata port that is the problem.

Edit: eSata card came with its own cable. Will try borrow another eSata cable at work to retest M6600 eSata port.

 

Just wanted to let you know that I was able to test the M6600 with an i-Omega 3178700 HDD2HS external drive.

I tested it with the M6600 in AHCI and RAID mode.

I ran the i-Omega in RAID1, RAID0, and Spanned.

It worked in every mode over the eSata port.

What I did not do is set up a RAID0 on my internal hard drives. I grabbed 2 drives from the tech shop and am loading my W7 image onto them now. Will retest two internal drives in RAID0 and the i-Omega drive in all of its modes.

Hopefully we can figure this out. Will post back in 15 minutes or so!

 

Just cannot wait, Bokeh. Having the internal RAID 0 is the most important part of the problem, I guess...

 

A lot of time mult-disk e-sata external disks wont work on laptops because the laptops dont support Port Multipliers. Some external cards do.

This might explain what you're seeing.

 

C'mon, my WD Studio II, 2-disk enclosure works without any problem on Dell's own XPS laptop - the only difference being SATA operation set to AHCI and not RAID 0 in the BIOS.

 

Maybe that laptop has the Port Muliplier built in..per amazon on that disk:

Pros:
1. looks sharp, great price, RAID capable.
2. easy setup over Firewire 800, device powers up automatically when connected to MacBookPro over FW800. Easy to set up RAID1 using the WD Drive Manager (on the install CD), and partition the drive using Disk Utility in Mac OS 10.6.7 (Snow Leopard)

Cons:
1. Since this has two drives inside, and a single eSATA port, it requires eSATA card with "Port Multiplier" (PM) capability. Not mentioned ANYWHERE in WD manual, on-line support. (Tech Support is clueless and not helpful at all.)

I don't blame WD for the hassle (see below) I went through with eSATA overall, but wish their documentation and on-line support had explicitly stated this. (Probably save themselves a lot of trouble with frustrated customers.)

I bought a slim Expresscard from Other World Computing (which is great for mac accessories in general), but didn't realize it doesn't support PM. As a result, the disk doesn't mount when connected using eSATA, and there's no error messages, just does not show up at all. The eSATA card also seems to send the MBP into Kernel panic with alarming frequency. Did a little research on Amazon and seems a common problem with eSATA cards. So I gave up on eSATA and go back to slower but much more reliable FW800 I/F.

 

I apologize for the quality of these pics. All taken with my phone.

Here is a pic where I tested it on the other machine. Currently running the mSata and a 500gb hard drive. I switched to RAID mode, but did NOT create a RAID drive. You can see the i-Omega in the bottom right hand corner.



Here is a shot of the i-Omega label




With 2 750gb hard drives in the machine set up in RAID0, I went back and did the tests again.

Here we have the Intel Rapid Storage Technology info panel



As you can see the drives show up. I had the DIP switches on the i-Omega flipped to RAID1 and as expected I had 931GB free.

I then went to Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management / Disk Management and made the drive active.

As you can see, the drive formatted without issues.



Once the drive was made active and formatted, it shows up under "My Computer".



I then shut down the machine and the external drive. I switched the i-Omega to RAID0 operation and rebooted.

Once again in the Intel Rapid Storage Application we see the drive show up.



Here is the advanced info on the external drive from the Rapid Storage App



Activate and Format the Partition:



Repeated the whole process with the i-Omega set to Spanned operation



Hey Dell-Mano - Your eSata port works. Someone also owes you an apology.

 

Thanks Bokeh - great work!

Before apologizing to Dell, though, I'd do with some deeper elaboration on a Port Multiplier being present or not in your i-Omega, and on the M6600 vs. XPS 15. Because if RXWatcher is right, and it proves that the latest and greatest M6600 doesn't have what a cheap XPS does, then well...

 

Tell me how to test for it and I will.

 

That's the point my Friend - I have no idea how to test that... Just too many variables!