“FirmTek is now shipping it SeriTek/2SM2-E ExpressCard adapter, one month ahead of original projections. Announced at NAB, the solution provides the MacBook Pro with storage performance capable of streaming live video directly to disk,” MacNN reports.
The SeriTek/2SM2-E extends SATA’s astounding performance beyond the desktop, enabling content producers to capture, develop, edit and create content in almost any environment when using Apple’s new MacBook Pro notebook computers. With transfer rates up to 3 gigabits per second per port, this breakthrough solution sets a new standard for handling data in a remote setting. FirmTek’s established hot-swap compatibility also makes it easy for users to move entire drives and arrays from the MacBook Pro to any FirmTek-equipped desktop system in seconds.
More info about FirmTek’s SeriTek/2SM2-E here.
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Related MacDailyNews article:
FirmTek announces Serial ATA ExpressCard Adapter for Apple MacBook Pro – April 24, 2006
I can’t think of anything that needs 3 gigabits per second–if it actually goes that fast. That is really cool though.
why is this better than firewire 800? anyone?
This and a RAID can get you full uncompressed HD editing…on a laptop.
notsure:
I think 3 gigabits (3000 MB) per second sounds a lot faster than FireWire 800 (up to 800 MB per second).
Face:
Pro and semi-pro film makers shooting on video shoot hundreds and even thousands of gigabytes of video and audio data. They would need speed.
because FW 800 is DEAD as a market viable product.
there are alreayd 100 times as many products for SATA than there ever have been for FW800.
Also, FW800 is much cheaper for companies to make than FW, because they have to include the expensive Oxford 912 chipset, or worse, something other than the Oxford.
SATA suffers from no IDE->FW glitches like FW boxes did… such as IDE level limits (some FW cases have crappy IDE->FW bridges, and cannot handle drives larger than 250 gigs, or maybe 120 gigs… etc…)
SATA has no limits to size (well, within sizes of the next 10 years or so). Its far cheaper to produce because the drives come off the same assembly lines they’ve always had, and there’s no need for any kind of “bridge’ device – just drive -> computer.
plus, SATA has far higher bandwidth than even FW800.
Now, if Apple had freely licensed FW, we’d be fine.. but they didn’t in the begining, and so, we’re stuck.
I’m as big a fan of FW as anyone, and yes, it is technically better.
but so was beta, PowerPC, and Neal Pert. But we all know that VHS, Intel, and Stewart Copeland were all, in the end, better and more popular.
FW has its place in the video world. It always will…
but i wish my hard drive had died a week later… then, i’d have gone this way instead of the dual raid box from OWC.. which is great – but i still would have rather done SATA.
oh yeah, being a pro videographer, there is no such thing as
enough hard drive space
fast enough hard drives
fast enough video processing.
and probably never will be.
my personal projects – the ones i don’t get paid for – i have about 2.3 TB of stuff saved from just the last 5 years….
FW is great for video devices but hasn’t hit hard in data storage.
SATA sounds ideal because you can hot swap. The dual enclosure from FirmTek is 200 bucks. Hopefully the price will get lower as time goes on. The drives themselves are pretty cheap already.
3 Gb/s is actually the same as 375MB/s
is if they made a card for the new macbook pros that had SATA ports for a high speed disk raid AND HD-SDI video in… everyone in television production would want these systems to live capture non-compressed HD from the camera.
Pardo me, but isn’t SATA 1.5 Gbits/sec per port?
Pardon
and shit