Hey All,
Hope your 2025 is getting off to a great start!
I have been wanting to experiment with using SATA drives with the MX-2424 for a number of years, as between my brother and I we have 6 of them.
I know that Strados here on the forum has both of his working with the Acard AEC-7730 SCSI to SATA bridge cards. These are small cards that have a 68-pin SCSI connector on one side, and a 22-pin SATA (data and power) connector on the other side...AND the electronics that do the protocol conversion.
I have found the AEC-7730 cards nearly impossible to find. For example, I have a Saved Search on eBay for them and a couple days ago I woke up and checked email to find a mail saying one was posted! It was sold before I even got out of the shower!
I know that Acard (based in Taiwan) has other SCSI to SATA bridge products and I contacted them about getting some. The one I inquired about was the ARS-2160. It is cool in that it not only is a SCSI to SATA bridge, but a drive tray as well. They got back to me and it was just too expensive...for me at least.
I noticed on their website that they had the AEC-7732 unit, which is marketed as a SCSI to SATA bridge for Optical Disk drives (ODD). From my time in this industry and on staff at Microsoft I thought that if it worked with CD-ROM drives, that it should also work with hard disk and solid state drives.
There are TONS of AEC-7732 units on eBay for very reasonable prices! Most brand new (“open box”), but nearly all from China. I decided to invest $130 and buy one to test.
When it finally arrived (after formatting the drive on my PC) I hooked it up to a 2TB SATA drive and the MX-2424 and it worked GREAT! So great in fact that I have now recorded approx. 2000 track hours with it in my tests! Roughly 15 projects that are 24 track recordings and typically 4 hours long each!
During my 2 weeks of testing, I emailed my contact at Acard, told him about my success, and asked him if it should really be working as well as it was with hard drive and SSD. He replied that they did indeed “migrate” the code into the AEC-7732 to work with hard drives and SSDs!
I have been testing with a 3.5” 2TB Seagate Barracuda SATA hard drive, and a 2TB Samsung EVO 870 SATA SSD.
Both drives have preformed flawlessly!
I have used the Orico Hot Swap SATA Tray (Model 1106SS) and the Orico 2.5” drive adapter (Model 1125SS) for my tests.
I have NOT even tried to format the 2TB drives on the MX-2424. I simply connected them to one of our PCs that has a SCSI card and formatted them as FAT32...using the Acard AEC-7732 to get them recognized by the SCSI card in the computer. I also have not yet attempted to format them by connecting them to a SATA interface in the computer.
After I format the drives on the PC I connect them to the MX-2424 and they take a few minutes to mount...yes a few minutes. Once they mount they ROCK!
One of the coolest things in my mind is that the MX-2424 sees them for what they are size-wise!! Check out the picture attached to this post! You are seeing that correct: Nearly 3600 hours reported as available on a newly formatted 2TB drive!! And the MX-2424 has been reporting the correct available record time as I have been filling up the drive with recordings!
I am in the process of installing a AEC-7732 in each bay of a Glyph two drive SCSI rack to put the SATA drives into production!
I am hoping that someone else will risk around $130 to get a AEC-7732 off of eBay and confirm my tests!!
Look forward to hearing from you!
Kind regards,
Jeffrey Bruton
Hope your 2025 is getting off to a great start!
I have been wanting to experiment with using SATA drives with the MX-2424 for a number of years, as between my brother and I we have 6 of them.
I know that Strados here on the forum has both of his working with the Acard AEC-7730 SCSI to SATA bridge cards. These are small cards that have a 68-pin SCSI connector on one side, and a 22-pin SATA (data and power) connector on the other side...AND the electronics that do the protocol conversion.
I have found the AEC-7730 cards nearly impossible to find. For example, I have a Saved Search on eBay for them and a couple days ago I woke up and checked email to find a mail saying one was posted! It was sold before I even got out of the shower!
I know that Acard (based in Taiwan) has other SCSI to SATA bridge products and I contacted them about getting some. The one I inquired about was the ARS-2160. It is cool in that it not only is a SCSI to SATA bridge, but a drive tray as well. They got back to me and it was just too expensive...for me at least.
I noticed on their website that they had the AEC-7732 unit, which is marketed as a SCSI to SATA bridge for Optical Disk drives (ODD). From my time in this industry and on staff at Microsoft I thought that if it worked with CD-ROM drives, that it should also work with hard disk and solid state drives.
There are TONS of AEC-7732 units on eBay for very reasonable prices! Most brand new (“open box”), but nearly all from China. I decided to invest $130 and buy one to test.
When it finally arrived (after formatting the drive on my PC) I hooked it up to a 2TB SATA drive and the MX-2424 and it worked GREAT! So great in fact that I have now recorded approx. 2000 track hours with it in my tests! Roughly 15 projects that are 24 track recordings and typically 4 hours long each!
During my 2 weeks of testing, I emailed my contact at Acard, told him about my success, and asked him if it should really be working as well as it was with hard drive and SSD. He replied that they did indeed “migrate” the code into the AEC-7732 to work with hard drives and SSDs!
I have been testing with a 3.5” 2TB Seagate Barracuda SATA hard drive, and a 2TB Samsung EVO 870 SATA SSD.
Both drives have preformed flawlessly!
I have used the Orico Hot Swap SATA Tray (Model 1106SS) and the Orico 2.5” drive adapter (Model 1125SS) for my tests.
I have NOT even tried to format the 2TB drives on the MX-2424. I simply connected them to one of our PCs that has a SCSI card and formatted them as FAT32...using the Acard AEC-7732 to get them recognized by the SCSI card in the computer. I also have not yet attempted to format them by connecting them to a SATA interface in the computer.
After I format the drives on the PC I connect them to the MX-2424 and they take a few minutes to mount...yes a few minutes. Once they mount they ROCK!
One of the coolest things in my mind is that the MX-2424 sees them for what they are size-wise!! Check out the picture attached to this post! You are seeing that correct: Nearly 3600 hours reported as available on a newly formatted 2TB drive!! And the MX-2424 has been reporting the correct available record time as I have been filling up the drive with recordings!
I am in the process of installing a AEC-7732 in each bay of a Glyph two drive SCSI rack to put the SATA drives into production!
I am hoping that someone else will risk around $130 to get a AEC-7732 off of eBay and confirm my tests!!
Look forward to hearing from you!
Kind regards,
Jeffrey Bruton
