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MacBook Pro Q&A - Updated November 15, 2008
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Is an external SATA adapter available for the MacBook Pro?
For readers who may not be familiar with the term, PC Magazine defines "SATA" or "Serial ATA" as providing a "a point-to-point channel between motherboard and drive" rather than Parallel ATA which is a "master-slave architecture that supports two drives on the same cable".
It also notes that Serial ATA (II) provides a maximum transfer rate of "3 Gbps (300 MBps)" and uses a small four pin cable compared to the 40-pin "ribbon" cable used by parallel. For a far more technical definition, you could choose to review InterfaceBus.
In a nutshell, SATA uses a much smaller cable and is faster than the standard it replaced.
The short answer to the question is "yes". On April 24, 2006, FirmTek announced the SeriTek/2SM2-E, which is "the world's first" external SATA adapter for the ExpressCard/34 slot provided by the MacBook Pro. The company reports that their product:
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.
The always excellent BareFeats reviewed a unit at the NAB conference where it was introduced. The entire piece should be read in its entirety, but the author concluded that:
We've been lamenting the lack of a FireWire 800 Port in the Apple MacBook Pro 15". This deficiency was compounded by the poor write performance of the MacBook's FireWire 400 port. Our fervent hope was that a third party would soon offer a faster storage interface using the new ExpressCard/34 slot.
FirmTek heard our "prayer" and delivered a SATA ExpressCard/34 hot-swap host adapter that gives us the speed we crave. If you need more storage capacity with transfer speeds that exceed the MacBook's internal drive and any drive(s) connected to USB 2.0 or FireWire 400 ports, the FirmTek SeriTek/2SM2-E SATA ExpressCard/34 is your "salvation."
Since that time, a number of companies -- including APIOTEK, Sonnet, and site sponsor Other World Computing -- have released SATA ExpressCard/34 expansion cards. Other World Computing has these expansion cards, as well as ones from FirmTek, available for sale.
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