ORICO PME-4U USB 3.0 PCI Express Card

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Hi, I have a spare ORICO PME-4U USB 3.0 PCI Express Card which I am thinking about installing in my Mac Pro 5,1.

Does any member have any experience with using these cards in their Macs? I have installed them in PCs before and they seem to work well, but I do not want to screw up something on my Mac...after all I have not had it a month yet.

Peter B.
 
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If it is original and you have the driver CD by all means pop it in and see how it goes. Amazon states Mac compatible with OS X.8.2 and higher. In early days of USB3 these cards were problematical and most recommended a Sonnet card.

In my Mac Pro days I used an eSATA PCI-e card for external connections. The Mac Pro comes with four bays, anything connected internally will be faster than an external connection, USB3 of SATA etc.
 
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If it is original and you have the driver CD by all means pop it in and see how it goes. Amazon states Mac compatible with OS X.8.2 and higher. In early days of USB3 these cards were problematical and most recommended a Sonnet card.
.

Thanks Harry,

I installed it yesterday but did not use the disc. It seemed to work fine when I plugged a flashdrive into it. Today I will run a few data transfer speed tests on a shakedown cruise to see how it performs when I move some big video files onto external storage.

I also e-mailed Orico asking if I really need to use the disc or not; the instructions are not very clear on this point. They are written in English-Chinese. The next task will be to figure out if my Mac Pro will recognize my Laird digital media converter connected via a FireWire port. But that is a whole new topic.

Peter B.
 
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I also e-mailed Orico asking if I really need to use the disc or not; the instructions are not very clear on this point. They are written in English-Chinese.

I heard back from ORICO in an auto reply message. They are closed for some Holiday or another until Feb 26. what a way to run a business. Only in China eh?

I think I will send the card back and get one from someone else.
 
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Ahh Peter it is Chinese New Year. The Year of the Dragon?

From Apple Discussions Peter it seems the two port card will work without drivers, and the four port card will not work - too much bus power required.


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5007158
 
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Ahh Peter it is Chinese New Year. The Year of the Dragon?

From Apple Discussions Peter it seems the two port card will work without drivers, and the four port card will not work - too much bus power required.


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5007158

Ah yes, I had forgotten about New Year.

The card comes with a separate power cable which connects to a spare HD power connection.

It took an hour to copy 400GB. Not exactly 5GB per second as advertised, yes? It should have taken about 2 minutes tops. Maybe I will wait to hear back from them.

Peter B.
 
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USB has always been, and still is, designed for small file transfers. By the very nature of USB, it is going to slow down on large transfers.

That speed sounds like you have reached the limit of the hard drives and their question is going to be related to the read and write speeds of the drives in use.
Need some understanding of burst, sequential, max, typical, ...

One of the pretty good articles about data transfer speeds as it relates to USB 3 specifically is here.

Moving 100 GB in 15 minutes - not too shabby.
 
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By the very nature of USB, it is going to slow down on large transfers.

One of the pretty good articles about data transfer speeds as it relates to USB 3 specifically is here.

Moving 100 GB in 15 minutes - not too shabby.

Hi Bobtomay,

I tried 3 files totaling 2 GB. How about 24 seconds...for a card that is supposed to do up to 5 GB per second. I'll check out the article on Tomshardware page. I will also do some comparison tests on one of my PCs.

Peter B.
 

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First: There is some misunderstanding.
The rating of USB 3 is 5 Gbps not 5 GBps.
That is gigabits not gigabytes.
5 Gbps = 625 MBps = 0.625 GBps.

Second: That rating is the "max theoretical bandwidth".

Third: In order to achieve the max bandwidth, the device you are reading from has to have the ability of reading that fast and the device you are writing to has to have the ability to write that fast. Most hard drives today max out at about 100-130 MBps write speeds. So even if the USB 3 connection allows 625 MBps, the issue here is the hard drive - not the USB 3 connection.
 
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First: There is some misunderstanding.
The rating of USB 3 is 5 Gbps not 5 GBps.

Thanks Bobtomay,

To "b" or not to "B" that is the question. Oops, it's that darn typist again.

Regards,

Peter B not b. LOL. ;D
 
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Peter as I said before the fastest transfer will be by using a hard drive in Bay 2,3 or 4. Got any spare bays inside the Mac Pro? Plus the ease of not having to plug, unplug, mount and dismount.
 
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Peter as I said before the fastest transfer will be by using a hard drive in Bay 2,3 or 4. Got any spare bays inside the Mac Pro? Plus the ease of not having to plug, unplug, mount and dismount.

Of course you are right Harry. I just picked up a 4TB external and may just take it out of its case and make it an internal. I have 2 x 2TB installed now, so I have 2 bays left.

I can drink a lot of coffee (or Scotch or both) waiting for a 35 GB file to copy onto an external drive, it is like watching grass grow. Maybe someday soon someone will come up with a really fast transfer system that can be retrofitted. In the mean time zzzzzzzz.

Peter B.:Sleeping:
 
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You'd really need to go with something like eSATA or Firewire to get bus-speed file transfers. In your case, I'd go with an eSATA card and external chassis. That oughta do just fine.
 
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You'd really need to go with something like eSATA or Firewire to get bus-speed file transfers. In your case, I'd go with an eSATA card and external chassis. That oughta do just fine.

Another good suggestion to look into. I guess I could move it if needed from machine to machine assuming they have an eSata card installed.

Thanks very much.

Peter B.
 
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I heard back from ORICO in an auto reply message. They are closed for some Holiday or another until Feb 26. what a way to run a business. Only in China eh?

I think I will send the card back and get one from someone else.

It was bad enough that I had to wait over THREE weeks while they were closed for Chinese New Year, but after numerous e-mails back and forth with them, they still cannot get the driver installed. They sent loads of website links, none of which helped. The eBay side of the company now tell me that it does not need a driver, and the parent company in China says it does. Huh?

I ordered this on Feb 2, it is now March 3.

Best advice I have is STAY AWAY from Orico. Nuf said, yes? :Grimmace:

Peter B.
 
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It was bad enough that I had to wait over THREE weeks while they were closed for Chinese New Year, but after numerous e-mails back and forth with them, they still cannot get the driver installed. They sent loads of website links, none of which helped. The eBay side of the company now tell me that it does not need a driver, and the parent company in China says it does. Huh?

I ordered this on Feb 2, it is now March 3.

Best advice I have is STAY AWAY from Orico. Nuf said, yes? :Grimmace:

Peter B.

Wish I'd read this sooner. Mine came from Amazon, with a driver CD. However, my experience so far is, only one out of 4 ports actually works. I made the mistake of buying two of them for two different mac pros, an early '06 and an '08. Neither card will let more than 1 port function.
 

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