External RAID enclosure is auto unmounting

Just purchased a Mediasonic RAID enclosure to run as an external mirrored hard drive. I inserted both new (and identical) 1 TB HDD's in the enclosure and used OSX's disk utility to set up the RAID.
Now when I connect the enclosure via USB2.0 two things happen. Firstly, the drive automatically unmounts after a min or so of it not being used. If I'm copying files to it, it will continue to run and keep mounted, but once I stop copying files the drive unmounts. The other thing that is happening is when I open disk utility now with the RAID connected, Disk utility tells me there is a "failure" with regards to the drives.
So my question is this...firstly how do I get this drive to stop auto un-mounting. And how do I properly set up a mirrored raid to use as a manual, external backup. I'm a photographer, and I manually backup my shoots onto external drives, I just want to be sure they are being double backed up via the RAID.
ideas?

Mirroring will not lose data and you will be able to perform any action through a complete drive failure. The working mirror will just seamlessly take over if the other one fails.
A purely striped RAID array will, if there is no parity, actually increase the probability of data loss since you will have your data spread through two or more drives with no backup.
The option around this is to use a parity drive such as that offered by RAID 4 or a distributed parity offered by RAID 5 so a failed drive in a striped RAID array can be rebuilt using the parity data. You will need at least 3 drives in your RAID array to have a parity option and the ability to rebuild the striped array.
If you have your array as a JBOD (just a bunch of disks) with no striping, or if it is striped with no parity as described above, then you do make maximum use of your available drive space; however, the increased number of drives in the system raises the probability that one will fail. You will have absolutely no way of accessing your data on the RAID if one drive fails and you do not have a parity option or mirror.
This is why these 2-drive RAID arrays are such a crappy option. While they can get you a massive amount of storage, they offer no protection against failure except for when they are in mirrored mode, but even in that setup there is no real advantage to the mirroring unless the drive is your boot drive.

Similar Messages

External RAID Enclosure

Hi guys, my external raid enclosure Mapower TB32 broke down saying I/O to the disk is failing. So I am seeking to replace it with an external enclosure which can give me at least Raid 5 with 1.5 tb disk. I use an internal areca 1110 in Raid 0.
Which one would you recommend for a budget of GBP£400. I was looking at the Areca 5020. Is there anything else I should consider here.
Thank you.

OK! I managed to get a Q5 as my external raid HDD. Now I have got 2 1.5TBs WD15EADS Western Digital HDDs hooked on my Areca 1110 in RAID 0. Apparently these drives are really slow for some reason, I don't know why. They are beaten by a single Seagate Hybrid in terms of benchmark. On the other hand I was planning to use theSE WD in RAID 5 alongside the 2 Seagate 1.5TBs. In addition I ordered another Seagate 1.5TB and when delivered it indicated that its a 5400rpm rather than the 7200, I currently have. So this means that I may have to RMA this HDD. Unfortunately one of my 1.5tbs just gone dead and needs to be RMA.
Now the major question that is worrying me now is which are the HDDs to go for here. The Seagate 1.5tb @ 7200rpm appears to be out of production and they are nowhere to be seen here in Egland. I am currently considering to sell the Western Digital and the remaining Seagate on Ebay and go for something else. Are the 5400rpm 1.5tb good for HD editing or the 1tbs @7200rpm.
Can someone help here,, some advise will be greatly appreciated.

Question using an external RAID enclosure

I am considering purchasing an external RAID enclosure (4-bay) made by Rosewill. Has anyone had any experience with them? I'm specifically looking at the model RSV-S4-X which includes a PCIe Sata card and cable.
Any "gotchas" I should be looking at or taking into consideration?
Thanks in advance.
Carl

Well, I had spent time trying to find reviews but where I did find a review it was with Windows - not Mac OSX. And the reviews I read were mixed. So, the question here was if anyone had experience with this product (or something similar) with a MacPro.
Thanks,
Carl

Huge Issues opening projects from eSATA External RAID-Please Help!

Hi peeps. I'm hoping you guys have some insight into my issue here. I thought I get further talking with you rather than trying Dell again. Here's my system specs in brief....
Dell Studio XPS 9100
Intel i7-960 3.2Ghz
18Gb DDR3 SDRAM 1333Mhz
Radeon HD 5870 1GB (until I can afford Quadro, but has no bearing on issue)
Windows 7 Pro 64bit - all updated
Venus DS3R Pro External RAID enclosure w/ 2x500Gb WD 7200rpm Drives in RAID 0 Config (forget exact models and am writing this not from edit system but from my internet-connected system)
Running CS5 Master Collection - all updates installed as of writing.
Ok, so here's my issue. Shortly after getting new system (above) and installing newly-purchased CS5 I had to work on one new project and make client-requested changes to an old project. Issue has been the same for both. When my external RAID was connected via eSATA, Premiere would take forever (and I mean forever) to load assets, would often (6 times out of 10) crash or hang-up system so badly as to require hard reset. Those times when I finally got the timeline up, playback was horribly choppy on both HD 720p (new project) and SD (old project). If any files needed conforming, Premiere would take (literally) hours and hours to perform task, and trying to export anything to DVD, blu-ray or encodes to files I would get multiple render issues or complete failures.
I was tearing my hair out until I finally remembered that Venus enclosure also has USB (2.0) out. Hooked this up and all problems went away. Projects loading correctly and quickly and playback is what I would expect from USB and software-only playback (as I mentioned above, am running Radeon card that came with system until I can afford NVidia option)
One strange thing is that After Effects was performing fine when drive was connected via eSATA (although the projects were very simple - I will test on complex project from archive).
My question is - do you guys agree with me that it's some kind of SATA driver issue? Or is there something going on in Premiere of which I'm unaware? I called Dell support and they helpfully informed me that "all my BIOS and chipware drivers are up to date but that I should rest assured that my complete satisfaction is their primary concern". Thanks Dell...you want to come finish my edit for me then?
Anyway...what do we think? Thinking of installing an eSATA card into a free slot - good idea?
Any help would be much appreciated - would like to get back onto eSATA thruput ASAP, esp. after I get Quadro card - prob next month.
Thanks in advance for your time!

Did this external enclosure ever work well with its eSATA connection? I doubt highly that this is a Premiere issue--as far as the program is concerned, it's blind to the nature of the storage medium you're using. Rather, I'd suspect a faulty or low-quality RAID or SATA controller in the enclosure. I've had issues before with "bargain" enclosures that either wouldn't connect over a certain interface, or were so sporadic and slipshod that I just pulled the drive out of the enclosure and used it bare.
If the enclosure worked well before, I would look at the eSATA connection on your computer as the issue. You might circumvent the Dell drivers site/advice and go hunting for your own from the OEMs.

Best external RAID option for MacBook Pro

I have been searching for an external RAID enclosure/solution to use with my MacBook Pro (with Thunderbolt). I would like to use Thunderbolt, but if Firewire 800 provides a more reliable solution than any of the Thunderbolt solutions I will go with the more stable options.
I have looked at a variety of options, and it appears the following are the top runners for a solution, any thoughts on any of these options:
Get a Promise Pegasus Thunderbolt array
The reliability of this unit really worries me, and if it failed as frequently as some are indicating, it could be busy nearly all the time recovering if I had 6+GB of content on the thing when it failed
Advantage of this unit is I could get enough capacity in one chassis to hold me for a fair length of time
The big disadvantage, if this thing fails as frequently as some indicate, restoring 6+GB of content to the thing does not sound fun
Get one of the Thunderbolt, OS X Software RAID boxes, (the likes of G-Tech, and Western Digital)
The use of the OS to manage the RAID array worries me, how is performance, how easy is it to replace a faulty drive and have the OS detect the new drive and start the rebuild process?
How long will it take to rebuilt a failed disc in the 2 to 3TB range?
Use the Firewire 800 port on a CalDigit VR 2 two drive RAID 1 mirror set
This seems to have fairly decent reviews, although there is not a lot of end user reviews that I have found
It will take at least three of the largest unit CalDigit makes to handle my images and have room for new images
Clearly Firewise will not be as fast as the Thunderbird devices
Get the CalDigit VR 2 but try to use the USB3 connection
CalDigit has a USB 3 card that can fit in the 17" MacBook Pro, but I have no idea how well the USB 3 card works with the MacBook Pro?
USB 3 does not daisy chain, the CalDigit card has two ports, however, if you have more than two external arrays you are still in a mood of swapping external drives
Drobo is coming out with Thunderbolt solutions
The bare box is pricey, add four or five large drives and there is some serious money in the thing
There are lot's of reports of failures and inability to rebuild, etc., on the Drobo
The OWC Quad interface QX2
A fair number of reports of failures on this device
Little information on rebuild speed in event a drive needs to be replaced
I am not very interested in a NAS, even with GigaBit Ethernet the performance will not be as good as direct attached
I do have a 3 year old Mac Pro that is under utilized, I could add more storage and even a RAID controller card for an external enclosures, but again, trying to edit images and/or videos across the network may not be a viable option
Any other ideas, something KNOWN to be good, with minimal failures, and when it does fail it rebuilds quickly and safely
The last piece of the solution is ideally a solution that is fairly low noise.
Any suggestions, direct end user experience, etc., would be greatly appreciated

What a list
Well, take a look at CalDigit's HDPro2 8TB (supporting RAID 5 and 6)
http://www.CalDigit.com/store.asp#HDPro2
It's more expensive than others but works with your MacPro thorugh PCIe connection and very reliable comparing to others.
or a cheaper HDOne 8TB in RAID 5/6
http://www.CalDigit.com/store.asp#HDOne

External RAID 0 with multiple Time Machine backups

I have a Macbook Pro (late 2012) and would like to utilize it to its fullest potential. I recently bought a 2TB time capsule, and I have an external WD my passport (2tb usb 3.0). I am a photographer and am starting to delve in HD video editing. I bought an external 2 drive usb 3.0 Raid controller. All my photos are on the WD myPassport and that's were pretty much all of my data is that the macbook accesses. The 128gb ssd that the os and programs reside on has around 30gb left.
I want to transfer all my photos and videos to the external raid enclosure (two 1tb drives) in a raid 0 for quick access of my data over the usb 3.0
I plan on formatting the myPassport and use the time capsule and the myPassport for dual time machine back ups and leave the myPassport at work and bring it home once a week to update the back up.
Does this sound like a reasonable backup solution to my external raid 0? Btw I will be using the WD Red drives in the raid array.

@FreddieMurry
All my photos are on the WD myPassport and that's were pretty much all of my data is that the macbook accesses.
1. Mistake number #1 anytime "all of ..." and "are one (a single)...." are used to describe someones priceless data
You dont need dual TM backups, ....you need a TM backup and a data archive, and a final optical archive (and more if possible)
use your WD HD for your TM and your 2 X 1TB RAID0 for perpetual data (your pics and vids as you indicate and all other vital data) secondary backups.
and third, a routinely connected and removed HD(s) archive stored away in a fireproof vault, box (40$ Walmart) etc.
and fourth optical storage on professional grade DVD media that is not prone to ferromagnetic degradation and rated for 100+ years (Taiyo Yudun DVD pro-grade blank media or other mfg.)
explained here:
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection
Data redundancy (copies) makes all HD crashes inconsequential, an irrelevancy.
Compartmentalize your system (OS) hub backup vs. that of your data hub archives, in so doing any failure in your computer (system [OS], data, computer) becomes quick to recover from!
Never consider any computer a data storage device at any time under any circumstance, rather a data creation, sending, and manipulation device. Anyone who thinks data is safe on any computer, even copied upon multiple partitions is making a mistake that will, without fail, strike.
Never backup your data exclusively upon magnetic hard drives or flash storage, nor consider same since magnetic storage degrades over time, roughly 3-8 years, even under ideal storage conditions.
Burn important data onto multiple copies of professional grade archival DVDs (Taiyo Yuden or likewise) and store them in cool dark fireproof safes, a safety deposit box, or multiple places.
Most importantly know that 2 copies of your data is 1, and 1 is none, and 100 copies stored in one place or building is also the same as none due to fire or natural disasters.

External RAID not recognized

I put together a 2x200 gb external RAID drive several months ago that has been working like a charm over FireWire to my Mac Mini. Galaxy Metal Gear enclosure with a pair of identical Western Digital 200gb drives, all of it brand new from newegg less than a year ago. I store my iTunes library and all my photos, plus documents and stuff like that -- basically the only thing I keep on the Mini's internal HD are applications and the system software (it's the boot disk, not the external).
I recently got a MacBook and wanted to put my iTunes library onto it so I could have some music on the road. The external drive was mounted on my Mini, so I tried to eject it but it wouldn't eject after several minutes. I had quit out of iTunes and anything else I could think of, but it still wouldn't eject. So (and here's where I'm an idiot) I just pulled the FireWire cable out of the back of the Mini.
Now all the drive does is spin and make random sounds, won't mount, won't get recognized in Disk Repair, won't get recognized by System Profiler, nada. I even downloaded Data Rescue II and ran it in the demo version just to see if it would work, but that won't recognize the drive either.
Any solutions? Is the drive dead? Can I disconnect one of the RAID drives and see if that will mount or would that hopelessly mess up my data?
any advice would be most welcome, thanks!

Hi Mark Ankcorn-
It sounds like one of the drives in the RAID is bad. Don't overlook the obvious and be sure to try a new USB or firewire cable.
The problem with a 2 drive RAID is when one drive goes bad there goes the RAID. Your data is already hopelessly messed up.
Luck-
-DP

Is the latest iMac compatible with external raid 1 drive setups?

I'm considering different new Mac options to replace my first gen Mac Pro. The new and most outfitted iMac seems like a good solution for my mostly Photoshop work. But, is the new iMac compaticle with Thunderbolt external RAID multi drive enclosures?

Sure, why not contact OWC (www.macsales.com) where they sell RAID solutions for Macs. Because they specialize in Macs they test every product they sell.

External RAID-1 storage providers?

I'm looking for suggestions and providers of RAID-1 (mirroring) storage solutions. I work in-house for a corporate video company and we think that an external RAID-1 storage would be best. I'm also very open to hear what other people think would work for us as i'd rate my technical knowledge at intermediate.
All our work is currently DV25. We may switch to HDV in 2 years or so. Currently we're working off various single drive Firewire or USB 2.0-based hard drives. Thus, I don't believe read speed is a concern for our needs. Also, I read alot about the drive speeds of technology like SATA III, so maybe read speed is a null issue?
We like RAID-1 for it's simplicity, it's very easy to understand how it works . It also feels like the right 'place' we'd like to be on the backup spectrum. We could be more intense with the backups (e.g. multiple backup drives at off-shore locations) or less intense (simply burn project files to DVD), so RAID-1 feels like a nice balance.
Cost is almost a null issue. But we're looking for a solution that provides for some portability. So we're not looking for some intense multi-server rack solution, but more something like a typical LaCie drive that we can put into our backpack and move to a different location. We definietly don't mind paying extra for the 'backup' drive as it pays off for us in piece of mind and ease of use.
How we're basically looking to do this is that when we're done a project and the RAID-1 is near full, we would simply catalogue it (whole different discussion lol), then place it on a nice looking shelf for clients to gawk at. We don't generate a ton of data. With the availability of 1+ TB hard drives, we would probably only be putting one or two RAID-1 drives into our storage space per year.
In terms of a RAID-1 drive/provider, we'd prefer to deal with a company that would still be around and relevant ~10 years down the road. Great customer service is also key. Internal build quality is important, and i'd be very happy to have an ugly ugly chassis if the internal parts were top notch. We also live in Canada incase that's an issue. We bought a G-Tech drive a while back and had to pay an extra 20% on it due to import duties .

Thanks Shane for the reply! My last experience with 'hot swap' was ~5 years ago with a server. It required a bunch of special trays, and I had extra hard drives pre mounted into these trays for hot swap daily backups. What is hot swapping a drive like now a days? Is it simply plug and play?
How durable is the CalDigit FirewireVR? The front grill looks delicate :S. As I may bring the drive to different locations (though it would be reasonably cushioned), durability is important to me.
Would you recommend that I buy spare hard drives directly from the enclosure manufacturer (e.g. CalDigit)? Do you know why they are so expensive (250 GB drive from CalDigit ~$120), higher quality? Since i'm doing RAID-1, would it be ok for me to buy drives from Best Buy (could get 500 GB for ~$100).
Also to clarify my previous post, our intention would be to use multiple enclosures. So once the RAID-1 is filled, we would NOT take out both hard drives and put them on the shelf. Rather we'd prefer to simply put the enclosure, WITH the hard drives inside, onto the shelf.
But if hot swapping IS simply 'plop in the naked hard drive and you're good to go', then maybe I'd be open to simply storing the RAID-1 hard drive pair on the shelf...
Message was edited by: Phillip Roh

Stability of Internal/External RAID

Hello, I was curious to know if you were going to set up a RAID, is there a choice between going with internal drives or external? I've been looking at some external RAID set-ups (G-Technology, Lacie) and they look pretty good. But would a internal drive be better or is it more suceptible to failure?
Also, if I did go internal, is setting up the RAID done in the OS or would I have to buy some software to do it?
thx

I meant, are you interested in RAID because you are seeking automatic backup, greater throughput or some other benefit?
If automatic backup, you will be better off with offline backup rather than RAID. Mirrored RAID only provides a degree of protection against one of the two drives in the array failing ... but most failures (i.e. loss of critical files) occur because of user error or a software glitch, and mirrored RAID is not going to protect you from that. Hence my emphasis on offline backup rather than RAID.
If greater throughput, you would need an external enclosure with an eSATA interface and SATA-II drives to have any chance of achieving greater throughput than you could achieve with a single SATA-II drive. If the external interface is FW400 or FW800 or if the external enclosure uses IDE drives instead of SATA-II drives, you won't get any greater throughput with RAID than if you had a single external hard drive. (The FW400/FW800/IDE interfaces are the limiting factors.) And if you're shooting DV, HDV or AVCHD, RAID isn't going to make any difference anyway because their data rates are well within the throughput capabilities of FW400 and FW800. The only way RAID would benefit is if you are comparing a pair of striped 5400 rpm drives against a single 7200 rpm drive ... and the single 7200 rpm drive would probably still win the throughput contest.
As for recommendations on drives themselves, I'd suggest either WD Caviar SE16 drives or Seagate 7200.11 drives. Both are excellent. Hitachi drives perform great but they run hot, and heat is the primary enemy of hard drive life; the drives that have failed me without warning have all been Hitachi drives. And i've never been a fan of Maxtor drives. One man's opinion (and experience).

One IDE drive and one ATA drive in a single RAID enclosure?

I just got an OWC AL Elite dual-drive RAID enclosure, and was told, by OWC, that I could drop an IDE drive and an ATA drive into the enclosure and it would work fine.
It's not - If I unplug one of the drives, it works fine: the drive mounts and shows up in Disk Utility, but when both drives are plugged in, it doesn't mount, and Disk Utility sees the drive as a single 2TB drive (one drive is 300GB the other 160GB).
any thoughts? I have the jumpers on the drives set at Cable Select, I tried them both on Master and the drive wouldn't even show up in Disk Utility.
thanks

Yes. I have it. They sell a model for ATA drives and SATA drives. Go into the "external enclosures" section and scroll down about halfway. It's in the multi-drive section.

Advice about a external RAID system for my iMac

OK, so I have a few questions and bare with me because while I'd say I'm rather tech-literate I know very little about RAID arrays.
I need to expand my external storage and right now I'm looking at getting a RAID enclosure and populating it with disks. The other alternative is a Drobo, but I'll get to that in a second.
Let's say I got a RAID enclosure which was filled with four 2TB HDDs. I've been looking into my options and for what I'm looking for it would be either RAID5 or RAID10. From what I gather, RAID10 is faster but RAID5 is higher capacity? Are there any other differences in terms of reliability that would make RAID10 better than RAID5?
I hear that RAID10 repairs faster than RAID5 but for my purposes that's not mission critical as long as the rest of my data isn't inaccessible while the repair is going on.
My real concern is what's the process of repairing and expanding RAID5 and RAID10 arrays? Let's say I had some extra money and wanted to add two 3TB HDDs to my array. Would it be more difficult with RAID5 or RAID10, or would there be no real practical difference?
Now, the other reason I ask all of this is because a Drobo requires no management at all for any of these tasks. I basically drop in the drives and let it do it's thing. Are RAIDs so much trouble that there's a real benefit to this or is that really only for people who are just that tech-illiterate?
I don't know, and that's why I'm asking. I'd really appreciate any advice you guys could give me at this time.
What I basically want is a drive I can use for file storage that's fast enough that I can pull HD content from it and have it run smooth as glass (which I imagine any FireWire system would be able to). I'm not using it for video editing, I'm probably not going to use it for backups unless you can partition a RAID array in such a way as I can section off 1TB of it just for backups (not necessary, I do have a drive for that).

I did some research and, from the sound of it, the way I'd increase a RAID5 array is to just swap out drives for higher-capacity drives and let it repair itself and once I had upgraded them all form 2TB to 3TB I'd have the increased space.
The problem is the RAID enclosure I was looking at didn't support the ability to do that, for some reason.
Still no idea about RAID10 but I think after researching it a bit more I'm going with a Drobo S. It'll cost me more (no surprise there) but the lack of any required management on my end really makes up for that. Plus, instead of having to buy four 3TB drives when I decide to increase capacity, I can just buy them one at a time.

External RAID

I'm going to be buying the new Mac Pro and I'll need some Thunderbolt 2 External storage. My question centers around having an enclosure that is for everyday use and an enclosure for just backup. Is it better to have 2 separate enclosures for my purposes or 1 large enclosure?

The power supplies they put in high end RAID enclosures is pretty reliable. But Grant is absolutely correct, if it comes to uptime then a separate backup is the only way to go. there are some really nice RAID units out there. You just need to define how many TB of storage and the selections will fall into place.
Early on I figured that moving to the Thunderbolt 2 specification would have little actual performance difference for most RAID units. But testing is showing 20% increase on some 8 drive units. The more drives in a RAID, the more the increase over their earlier Tbolt Rev 1 siblings. Most 4 and 5 drive Tbolt RAIDs are not going to show any benefits when updated to Rev 2.
Rick

Unable to capture to external RAID drive FCP 7

Here are my specs:
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP11.005C.B08
Running:
OS X 10.5.8
Final Cut Studio 3 (recently upgraded from Studio 1)
At the end of last year I had a problem with capturing and upon research it seemed to be that the most recent update of QuickTime was not compatible with Final Cut Pro 5, which was causing my machine to not be able to capture at all. So we upgraded to Final Cut Studio 3 (FCP7) and part of the problem was solved but an issue still remains.
For over 3 years we have been using an external Raid drive as a capture scratch and we still have over 5 TBs free. The Raid is connected by SCSI. Earlier last year I was able to capture to the Raid drive without any problems but now the capture will freeze whenever that is set as the capture scratch. If I set the internal drive as the capture scratch it captures without any issues.
The problem is that using the internal as the capture scratch can only be a short term solution. The drive is only so large and I have a problem with finder if I try to move files from the internal drive to the external. Finder freezes up and I can't even force quit properly. So being able to once again use the external as the main capture scratch is the only real solution. The external is fully functionally and communicating with the Mac.
Any help with resolving this would be appreciated!

Off the top of my head, because I haven't worked with SCSI in years--
"The problem is that using the internal as the capture scratch can only be a short term solution. The drive is only so large and I have a problem with finder if I try to move files from the internal drive to the external. Finder freezes up and I can't even force quit properly. So being able to once again use the external as the main capture scratch is the only real solution. The external is fully functionally and communicating with the Mac."
Are you trying to move files while you have FCP open? The fact that simply moving files is giving you finder issues and freezing you up, says that all is not well with the scsi raid. You should not see that at all.
You might try powering down the mac and the raid, unplugging and letting the machine sit for a while to discharge the capacitors. Then try reseating the scsi card. (pull it out carefully and plug it back in.)
On another note, when you upgraded fcp, did you do a clean install?

Upgraded to Mavericks. Now External HDD Enclosure Won't Mount. Is there a fix?

Upgraded to Mavericks. Now I can't get my external HDD enclosure to mount. A little about this enclosure, as it's not the usual settup . I have four 3TB HDDs in a RAID5 settup. The most unique part is that they are formatted as a Windows NT Filesystem (Tuxera NTFS). Basically, when I set this up, I had to get a lot of info from a Windows-formatted HDD, but also be able to read/write afterwards. It's worked fine for ~ 1 year, but now that I've upgraded to Mavericks, nothing will mount. I ran Disk Utility, where I see the HDDs (I've partitioned them into four drives of varying sizes), but they are greyed out. I tried to mount them, but it says it won't and that I should run First Aid. So I did...tried to "Repair Disk," but it just gets stuck on "Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required." For over an hour it's been on that message.
So, does anybody out there have a fix? I've read several similar posts about people having a hard time mounting and, overall, dealing with external HDDs after upgrading to Mavericks. But nothing seemed to fit my exact circumstances. Lastly, I should mention that I've used both Firewire and USB connections. Both resulted in the same.
Thanks.

I can't help with specifics for your issue, but some general thoughts:
The upgrade and the disk problem may be a coincidence. It would help you if you could verify that the drive still works fine on a windows machine. If you run a windows virtual machine or have a windows pc, or a friend does, verify full functioning that way. If it still won't mount on the mac, try to copy/backup it's data onto the windows machine (maybe another external drive connected to it. You could then scrub the disk in windows, leave it unpartitioned, unformatted. Connect it back to the mac and format it as HFS+ (Mac extended journalled) and transfer the data back to it by sharing the windows machine external drive and connecting the two machines with a network cable.

External RAID enclosure is auto unmounting

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