Connecting 5 external WD black/green caviar drives to my iMac

I just bought last month the latest iMac computr model which unfortunately does not have eSATA port but only UBS and Thunderbolt.
I have five Western Digital black and green caviar drives, 4 of which were used in my MacPro in the past.
What devices should a acquire to connect all of these drives to my new iMac so that I an access all of them without shifting one drive to the next ?

Where do they suggest plugging in the RAID controller on your iMac?
If all you are concerned about is accessing the drives and if you want to do it far cheaper go the USB or Firewire route or spend not much more on a NAS enclosure set up.
USB enclosures - Choose cases based on physical HDD size (2.5" or 3.5")
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dcomputers&field-keywor ds=USB+Enclosure
USB Hubs - choose one that has enough ports for your current and future needs.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dcomputers&field-keywor ds=USB+hub
Mount your drives in the enclosures and plug them all in to the hub, plug the hub into the iMac and you should see all the drives seperately in Finder.
Next up in speed would be similar to USB Hubs and enclosures - Firewire enclosures
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dcomputers&field-keywor ds=firewire+enclosure
Make sure you choose enclosures that support daisy chaining (i.e. two FW ports on them) and that you will need FW cables to connect them in a chain. Connect the first in the chain to your IMac via the FW port on the back. Use FW800 if you can, You should see each drive seperately in Finder.
Or go the NAS route
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dcomputers&field-keywor ds=nas+enclosure
Stick the 4 disks in a 4 bay NAS enclosure which will connect to your iMac via USB, set it up as a striped array and you will see the total disk space as 1 drive in Finder. One downside to this method is you will need to format the array before you can use it thus loosing any data you may have on the drives already.
Speedwise it goes like this - USB - FW400 - FW800 - TB
Only go the Thunderbolt route if you are concerned about speed as it is far more expensive than the other methods.
Hope this helps
Jerry

Similar Messages

HT4106 Will this thing support if I connect external HDD's or Flash drives to watch movies or transfer photos?

I'm very interested in purchasing this accesory for my camera but I would like to maximize it's usage. I wanna know if the camera connector (via the usb port) will support if I connect, say, flash drive or external hdd. I want to know if I can watch movies directly from the hdd/flash drive instead of buying an app to stream

Theoretically you can put movies and videos onto an SD card, satisfy the naming requirements - all files in a DCIM folder and with a name of exactly 8 characters. Then you can use the photo app to import that video file onto your iPad, watch it and delete it.
Does require that you have the room to import....so it's not perfect but it does work.
but if you want to watch a lot of movies and video files, the seagate is probably the best way to go since you can keep tons more than what fits on a 4-32 gig card (which start to get pricey after a bit)

Is it possible that iMac corrupts connected external hdd-s drive via USB?

Is it possible that iMac corrupts connected external hdd-s drive via USB? (two wd cav. green 2tb from different purchase went down in one day, both from the backside usb ports)
First one of my video storage hdd, full of files suddenly got extremely slow, and a few minutes later, it unmounted itself, but with the unmount error, but nobody even touched the cables, electricity etc. When I tried to mount it again, it did not respond, just give a periodical load light and ticking. First I thought it must be hardware failure, but since I bought a brand new drive today and it made the same problem as soon as I tried to format it. I got suspicious. The consol, said about these - i googled all but now solution so far. (WesternFresh is my drive)
Oct 23 17:10:58 xxxx fseventsd[47]: disk logger: failed to open output file /Volumes/WesternFresh/.fseventsd/636573acca1d6550 (No such file or directory). mount point /Volumes/WesternFresh/.fseventsd
Oct 24 10:55:42 xxxx com.apple.kextd[10]: Can't create kext cache under / - owner not root.
Oct 24 17:23:05 tmdc diskarbitrationd[16]: unable to probe /dev/disk1 (status code 0xFFFFFFFA).
and there was an I/O faliure not but it was on another mac - where i hoped itt will come back to live.
I think - if it is possible - that the OS maybe misunderstand something about these drives, and try to change - maybe permissions - all the time if a usb external connects...? (I am not really into it as you see )
Also about Disk Utility - it does not see any partition on the old hdd, but i shows the name of the product. If I connect the new hdd via the keyboard usb, the disk utility is able to see and format it, but the hdd will be still slow and tikking after it.
Also I tried Disk Warrior (freezd out) and Techtool Pro 6 thanks to some ol'frineds - which also not saw the old hdd, but did nothing useful with the new one.
About cav green: I have 3 of them and no error so far, and got 4 1tb cav green in 2 mybook studio II also without any problem.
Iam a bit scared, and try not to plug in any usb hdd-s now, but I have to continue work, so I need solutions.
I hope if it is not hardware failure, maybe some tricky terminal code will bring back the viability of my old hdd - and I won't have to spend a lot of money to recover data.
strange.
if anybody has a clue?
update 1:
i found this post also:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15905481#15905481
I also made the mentioned steps - but it is a bit different sice it reproduce itself and I cant use DU.

It turned out that WD is the big bad guy in this game.
According the data rescue company where I asked for an inspection, both of the drives had their reader head loose. And in the one, which was my already-in-use disk its even damaged the platters... xxxxx
So its time to pay bunch of money to recover, and take a walk to wd service to bang on the desk.
Also note - it may be somehow related to intellispeed technology - since macs not really friendly with wd-s built-in solutions.
On the other hand, with WD GP 1Tb there is no problems at all for ages.
thanks guys, thread is closed

Is it possible to connect an external USB 2.0 hard drive to a Thunderbolt Display?

Hello,
Is it possible to connect an external USB 2.0 hard drive to a Thunderbolt Display and back up a MacBook Air to the external hard drive using Time Machine?
I intend to connect my MacBook Air to the Thunderbolt Display using a Thunderbolt cable.
I would also like to connect my printer via USB 2.0 to the Thunderbolt Display. Will this also work?
Effectively using the Thunderbolt Display as a USB hub or docking station.
Regards,
Ben

Ok, thanks.
My 1 cable to ThunderBolt Display objective
MacBook Air -> (via 1 x Thunderbolt cable) -> Thunderbolt Display -> (via 1 x USB cable) -> USB 2.0 external hard drive
I would like to know if this configuration is possible and Time Machine will run correctly.
Your 2 cable suggestion (I think)
MacBook Air -> (via 1 x Thunderbolt cable + 1 x USB cable) -> Thunderbolt Display + USB 2.0 external hard drive
This configuration requires 2 cables to disconnect/reconnect from my MacBook Air.

I connected my external hard drive to my new imac to put all of the information from my macbook onto it. i have been working on the macbook now and want to reconnect the external hard drive so my imac is updated with the work. How is that done?

I connected my external hard drive to my new imac to put all of the information from my macbook onto it. I have been working on the macbook now and want to reconnect the external hard drive so my imac is updated with the work. How is that done? or is it possible?

As I said, I don't use Time Machine, so it'd be best to wait for an "expert" answer, but, with my very limited knowledge, I'd say: probably not - so, for now, I'd suggest you read up on Time Machine:
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Home.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=search&src=support_site.home.search&local e=en_US&q=time%20machine
And, you might be attracting more knowledgeable answers if you were to post this question in the Time Machine Forum (part of the Snow Leopard forums).

I would need to connect an external drive to my iMac computer?

I have an iMac hard drive that was purchased 1 year ago from the Apple Summit Sierra store in Reno, Nevada. I have had a lot of issues so this drive was replaced by a new one. The old hardrive contains OS 10.5.x and has appleworks which I created a lot of documents.
The Apple Summit's Genius bar installed OS 10.6.8 onto the new hard drive and now, I am NOT able to open those files that were created with the appleworks software that resided on the old hard drive. I notice that appleworks was replaced by Pages which will not open appleworks files.
So this is what I am asking the community...
1. I would like to connect the old hardrive as an external drive so I can open these documents. What is the best way to do this? Someone mentioned that I would need a "sled" which I suspect is an external casing that has it's own power and connects via USB. I don't recognize the type of plug that I would need.
2. The old apple computers could start up from the external hardrive connected to it. Is this still possible with the newer intel computers?
I would appreciate anyone's suggestions or input. Thank you...

To use the HDD as an external drive you need and external drive enclosure. It would connect with your computer via USB or FW; my preference is to have it set up for both for flexibility .Check your computer ports to see what you need.
When you buy the enclosure check to see whether it comes w/ the cables you need.
A good source to check for the HD enclosures is: http://www.macsales.com/ If you're not sure of what you need just call them; they're very helpful. There are other sources for these but OWC is my favorite.
Your old HDD is probably bootable. Once you have the drive in the enclosure connect it to the computer.
You can get some data, etc. from the old HDD to the new drive by clicking the ext. HD icon on the desktop to open & dragging whatever you want (or Copy/Paste) to your new HDD.
Alternatively you can set the external drive as Startup Disk:
Go to System Preferences>> Startup Disk. Your new external drive should show there. Click on new drive and Restart. When the computer has rebooted the external HDD (with old HDD) will now be the Startup Disk. Until you change it again in System Preferences.
Do you have the appleworks software disks? You could install that on the new HD, and just move the files from the external HD to the new drive---or is that part of the plan?
Good luck w/ this.
Message was edited by: epass

I have a disconnect between my external hard drive and lightroom 5.6. The recommended steps do not connect 11000 photos on the hard drive. How can I connect? I am concerned I have lost my edits in lightroom.

I have a disconnect between my external hard drive and lightroom 5.6. The recommended steps do not connect 11000 photos on the hard drive. How can I connect? I am concerned I have lost my edits in lightroom.

after some sorting out your article, I clicked on a question mark with the message find the missing folder. This brought me to a page where I could choose a folder by year and click on it. The question marks disappeared and the photos were available. In some cases I had to click on the year folder for each subfolder by date.
The find missing folders message did not bring me to the finder window in which I could click on folders in the hard drive itself. I appreciate your help big time!!

Time machine backup of connected external hard drive

Morning all,
I've read through various posts regarding my question but most appear to be slightly vague for my understanding.
I have a 3TB TM with a 500GB external mac formatted hard drive connected via USB. This hard drive contains music and a couple of years photos that will eventually go into iPhoto once sorted but I'd like TM to back up this hard drive for the moment.
Upon entering TM Preferences and the Select Disk button, I have a list of backup drives that includes the external hard drive. The default backup disk is the TM.
What I cannot understand is how to get TM to backup this external hard drive using the preferences given to me?
Or, if, by default, this drive is being backed up, where are these settings listed?
Many thanks
Tim

I have a 3TB TM with a 500GB external mac formatted hard drive connected via USB.
Is the 500GB connected to the TC or the Mac?? I am lost but as I read that sentence the USB drive is plugged into a TC.. and the TM is a typo.. Time Machine is software on your computer.. Time Capsule is a hardware router with a hard disk,, in your case 3TB.
TM cannot backup network drives.. plug the 500GB into the Mac and it will automatically list in exclude on TM.. you have to remove it from the exclude list to be included.. it is kind of thinking a solid state physicist would use.. holes instead of electrons.

Connecting External Hard Drive

I have recently purchased a Western Digital MyBook external USB hard drive and cannot get it to mount through the airport extreme base station to my desktop. On my laptop it recognizes the HD immediately through wireless when I turn the computer on. On my desktop which is connected to the base station directly though a DSL cord the disk does not mount at all, or come up as a recognized device. I am running OSX 10.4.11 if that helps at all.
thanks
garrett

My problem is similar, but different.
I bought a MyBook USB drive. Connected it directly to my iMac, and reformatted the disk to HFS+. Then connected it to my AEBS (8.11N).
1) iMac (wired to AEBS) _sees it fine_ in Finder and TimeMachine,
but Airport Utility _does not see it_.
2) macbook (also wired connection to same AEBS) _does not see it_ in finder.
Mark.
3) other macbook (wireless connection) _does not see it_ in finder.

Can not get my Envy 15 3040nr to recognise my USB connected external hard drive

Hi All,
Have recently upgraded my HP Envy 15 3040 nr to Windows 8. All good except it wont recognise my USB connected external hard drive. At first I thought my USB port(s) might be faulty as it did recognise the drive a few weeks back but now it wont. Tried connecting other USB devices and they worked no problem.
I have also recently upgraded the BIOS on my laptop and wonderd if this might be the root cause. All in all somewhat perplexed.
Any ideas, suggestions greatly appreciated.

Hi
In order to resolve the issue that I think that you should uninstall the Universal Serial Bus controller in Device manger by uninstalling all options under the USB controller.
Then restart the laptop and uninstall driver will be installed automatically.
Tell me all findings that external harddrive is detected or not.

Losing connection to external drives, tried disc utility got a message "No live updatin...? Retried new connections; is there a way to test the external usb hub? The drives will occasionally display in Apple profile. Any help would be deeply appreciated

Losing connection to external drives, tried disc utility got a message "No live updatin...? Retried new connections; is there a way to test the external usb hub? The drives will occasionally display in Apple profile. Any help would be deeply appreciated

It's not just you, I can't authorise my phone. It seemed to go down just after I started the update (it wasn't my fault though). I am using chrome, and it does not seem to be a firewall issue, or the bannerblock issue that I read about else where, since I dont have that program installed. Strange though how the support forum is still running. If I go to http://www.apple.com/support I get nothing, but googling topics allows me to see em.

Suddanly Mbp display has got inverted colors with black on white settings. in universal access. When I connect external display(tv), TV display is normal. I reinstalled os x lion. But it did not help.

Suddanly Mbp display has got inverted colors with black on white settings. in universal access. When I connect external display(tv), TV display is normal. I reinstalled os x lion. But it did not help. I had this problem before but it solved after reinstalling os x lion.
Did you have this problem? What should I do?

Sorry, its not an external display. I changed out THE display in my imac. When I hooked up my wife's display it was photo negative and the imac was color. I changed the Universal Settings and the external display went to color and the imac went to photo negative.

HD WD Green Caviar 500GB is compatible with iMac G5?

hello,
I installed hard disk WD5000AADS (500GB - SATA II) CAVIAR GREEN in iMac G5 17" iSight 1,9Ghz. with Leopard. It is hung in the starting with the gray apple. Why?
I placed jumper in the pins 5-6 of the HD CAVIAR to turn it to SATA I, and nothing to changed. iMac is congealed with the gray apple in the screen.
Please, simple answers. I speak Spanish, little English.

I'm still not clear on how you did the installation onto the internal drive. My understanding is...
You used a friend's Intel Mac to duplicate your Mac OS X Leopard installation disc onto an external FireWire drive. You did it this way because your iMac G5's optical drive is broken.
You connected that external FireWire drive to your iMac G5, and started up from it, which would be the same as starting up from the optical drive with the Leopard disc. You got to the first Installer screen.
You used Disk Utility to format the new internal hard drive. Then, you installed Leopard on the the iMac G5's internal drive.
Upon restarting, the iMac G5 stalls and does not go further. This same method worked previously, with a different internal hard drive installed.
Is the above correct?
More images iMac G5, internal computer...
I would not be able to tell what is wrong by looking images of the components, unfortunately. I don't think the power supply or heat is the issue, because you do get to the stalled screen and you are able to start up and run the iMac from an external FireWire drive (assuming my understanding above is correct).
Are you still able to start up that iMac G5 from an external FireWire drive? If so, what happens if you put that new internal drive with the new Leopard installation into a FireWire case and try to use it to start up the iMac G5? Does that work?

New WD Scorpio Black 750GB hard drive not recognized

Hey guys,
I've purchased a WD Scorpio Black 750GB hard drive for my newly acquired MacBook Pro 5.5, 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. The hard drive is installed (internal) but not being recognized by disk utility. Browsing on Google, I've found this to be a common occurring problem but as there were no direct solutions, I'm posting this in case anyone has any solutions to this issue.
I've reset the PRAM/ NVRAM with no avail. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers

Your response is not 100% clear to me.
Have you actually installed the WD and Seagate HDDs in the MBP or just connected them while in an external enclosure?
When you put the original HHD back in the MBP, it is recognized in Disk Utility but cannot be repaired? Is that the case.
Have you tried to put in the original Installation disk and has the original HHD been recognized and/or one of the other HDDs in an enclosure been recognized?
Ciao.

External screen turns green?

I've had this setup for a while now.. A 12 inch PB with a CRT 17 inch monitor connected to the PB through the "mini dvi to vga" adapter..
Now this is the problem: since a few days the image on my external screen is green.. It's not totally green, i can see pictures and programs but it's like the color balance isn't right.
First I tried to change this through display calibration -> didnt help
Then i tried to manually adjust the color balance through the screen display settings -> didn't help..
So I thought my crt monitor was broken. But then I connected my PB to another external screen trough my "mini dvi to vga" adapter. And I had the same green screen. Then I knew it wasn't my crt monitor that was broken but it had something to do with my output signal..
Fortunately a friend of mine has a nice 20 inch tft display. I tested the connection again with the "mini dvi to vga" adapter and got the same green screen. But then I connected my PB to his 20 inch screen through a "mini dvi to dvi" adapter and the green was gone! So it couldn't be the output singal of my PB..
So i figured my "mini dvi to vga" adapter must not work properly somehow. I don't know how it could have broken. It happened just like that. I turned off my PB, and when I turned it back on the external screen turned green. I didn't do anything weird with it..
Could this be? That the adapter is broken? Or do you guys think there might be something wrong with the output signal after all?
Anyone encountered something similar?

So I went to an apple store today, and explained them my problem. We tried a new "mini-dvi to vga" adapter but still the external screen was green!! Also, when using my adapter that I supposed was broken on another PB the output singal was perfect! So as it turns out, it's my PB thats not working properly..
The guys at the store said it must be somthing with the motherboard.. I just don't think I can miss my PB for more than a few days!! :P

Connecting 5 external WD black/green caviar drives to my iMac

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for