WD MyBook2 Home Edition eSATA problem

Hi, I recently purchased a Firmtek Seritek/2SM2-E eSata ExpressCard for my MacBook Pro, and I never got it to work with either the Seagate FreeAgent or the Western Digital MyBook eSata drives. I thought I had a bad ExpressCard, but I received the following information from Firmtek's support team. (I haven't verified this information with Seagate or WD because I'm done dealing with those particular external drives, so I'm making a big assumption that the Firmtek team is correct).

From Firmtek support:
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- Both Seagate FreeAgent and WD My Book are essentially same drives from SATA interface point of view. While internally each company is using own mechanism, the SATA electronics communicating with the outside world appears to be made by the same manufacturer both Seagate and WDC did contract to do the external box design. It does not appear to be Seagate or WDC.

- The SATA interface of both VIOLATES the SATA protocol, not supporting certain mandatory commands.

- There is a further issue, which prevents the said drives work properly with ANY of SATA controller we are aware of on the Mac. There is an exception: any SiliconImage 3132 or 3124-based controller (ours is based on SiliconImage 3132) will work: as long as the driver of Silicon Image (manufaturer of the chipset) is used instead of any other driver. That driver has some shortcomings:

- it emulates SCSI over SATA instead of using Apple's
SATA API-s
- it does not support S.M.A.R.T.
- it does not have bootability provision

...
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I was so frustrated that I initially planned to return the card, but I ordered another eSata drive from Other World Computing, who has been great to work with [OWC / macsales.com]. (I know your message wasn't referring to a Mac...) I'll see how that OWC drive works this weekend. Hope this helps. PM me if you have any other questions at 1electricsheep -/at\- gmail.com.