External enclosure woes

Hi
I am struggling with this issue: I have a couple of external HD enclosures with FW 400 ports. I put IDE drives into them, hook then into the G6 (and my Mini for that matter) and voila ...
Except, now, the HDs are not showing up on the desktop. Hardware Profiler recognizes the Enclosures, but the HDs themselves are not showing up. HDs themselves are fine. The enclosure itself is an Adaptec but, frankly, I have had continuing issues with several brands; is this just something that can't work?
I have reset the FW ports by shutting down, etc but that does not help. Again, Hardware Profiler recognizes the enclosures but not the HDs. I have 6 HDs with crucial info on them and only one spare HD slot inside the G5, what are my options now?
Any advice very much appreciated

These have served me well: http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/firewire/U6SATA.php
Granite Digital also has relatively inexpensive multiple bay firewire enclosures for ATA drives.
The only thing left to try is to get another enclosure, put a new drive in to make sure everything is working, then start swapping drives.
Mike

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MacBook Pro and External Enclosures

Just now updating from a PowerBook G4 to a brand new MacBook Pro...
I understand there may (will) be issues with trying to use FCP with Mavericks, but I'm really not wanting to switch to FCP X.
I would like to get a two-bay external enclosure to use with the new MBP. Can anyone offer suggestions? Does it need to be Thunderbolt to get the most out of my editing? And which drives would you suggest?
And do I REALLY need to migrate to FCP X? I'm currently editing with FCP 7 on my office MacPro. So if I do offline work on the MBP and then finish projects on the office MacPro, it makes sense to me to try to stick with FCP 7 for the workflow.
Thanks for listening...

For an external enclosure, I like this:
http://www.caldigit.com/T3/
or something from:
http://www.macgurus.com/store/Category/SATAEnclosures
Go with thunderbolt if you can afford it, you want the fastest interconnection possible and it certainly is an easy connection to your computer. If you are goiing with an eSata enclosure, you will need to look at a Thunderbolt PCIe Card box so you can put in a eSata raid card.
USB3 is also worth looking at, although I have had some problems with USB3 using port multiplied enclosures.
As Mr. Ross points out, there are options - including staying with FCP-7. The problem is that production world is changing at hyper-speed, and FCP-7 was killed several years ago. There will soon come a time when the third-party workarounds to get contemporary standards of media in and out of FCP will become too difficult and time consuming to make it worth while.
So while FCP-7 is and always will be a great editor for those who know how to use it - it certainly is time to consider another NLE.
MtD

Can I move Time Capsule hard drive to an external enclosure for faster restore (or initial back-up)?

I upgraded my Time Capsule with a 4TB hard drive. I just backed up 500GB of data from a MacBook Pro with Time Machine and it took almost an entire day over a wired gigabit connection. The next MacBook Pro I need to back up has more than 2TB of data, so I'm anticipating that the process will take nearly four days. The slow speed of the Time Capsule leaves me with two questions...
1. If I ever need to restore my entire system from the Time Capsule, can I remove the drive from the Time Capsule, install it in an external hard drive enclosure and restore from that as it will be a much faster USB 3.0 connection than through the Time Capsule itself?
2. To save the time of waiting four days for the initial Time Machine back-up, can I remove the drive from the Time Capsule, install it in an external enclosure to do the first back-up and then put it back in the Time Capsule for future back-ups?
Thank you.

2. To save the time of waiting four days for the initial Time Machine back-up, can I remove the drive from the Time Capsule, install it in an external enclosure to do the first back-up and then put it back in the Time Capsule for future back-ups?
The answer to this is no.. TM backup is done differently on a local drive .. cf a network drive. The network drive must have the backup inside a sparsebundle.. you can read the backup locally and it is vaguely possible to backup files from local to sparsebundle but you are still going to find TM is pretty finicky if it finds you tampered with its internals.
I agree with Kappy .. if you want to use local backups just use USB3 drive.. it is a bit unfair to compare.. as USB3 is 5Gbps connection whilst ethernet is only 1Gbps.. you might also find the speed in the backup is limited by sheer mechanical drive performance.. figures are always quoted for single large files but when you copy heaps of small files.. a mechanical drive takes a lot of time writing file allocations.. even if the actual file write is short.. it takes a long time relative to track after track of large file copying.
Let me add a few things.. 500GB disk in the MBP is not the quickest.. they are usually the slow 5400rpm drives.. unless you replaced it.
Our experience of TC suggests a speed of around 50GB/hr average doing backups.. but it is essential that you turn off wireless.. otherwise you will slow it down.. It is also important IPv6 is set correctly to link-local only and you cannot trust auto to get that right.. you need to set it.
If you still cannot achieve average speed of around 50GB/hr something is wrong.. either you are not getting full gigabit or something is slow.. test with the single large file eg 1GB over ethernet and see.. you should manage speed of around 50MBytes/sec.. (it can vary from 30-60 however... ).
It can take a long long time to do 2TB.. if that is all internal then perhaps look at using TM for the boot drive only.. you surely have it partitioned.. or multiple disks.. and use Carbon Copy Cloner for the other partitions.. it is not that it will go any faster.. but that you can separate out the tasks easier.

Mac mini 2009 mavericks won't boot. Blank display no logo,etc. Tried all keyboard boot functions, no help. replaced RAM w/known good. No help. Removed HD mounted in external enclosure and ran permissions and repair. No help. Upgraded HD to Yosemite a

Mac mini 2009 Mavericks won't boot. Chimes and power light comes on. USB ports have power. Blank display no logo,etc. Tried all keyboard boot functions, no help. Replaced RAM w/known good. No help. Removed HD and mounted in external enclosure and ran permissions and repair. No help. Upgraded HD to Yosemite and was able to boot another mini from HD mounted in external enclosure, reinstalled HD still no boot. Any ideas on how to proceed appreciated.

- Make an appointment at the Genius Bar of an Apple store. You have a hardware problem.
Apple Retail Store - Genius Bar

HELP ! Two SATA drives in an external enclosure RAID ZERO. Need data recovery.

What a nightmare !     My neighbor died from esophageal cancer and the funeral is in one week. He left behind a G5 2.5 DP tower with a dead motherboard, and he put the two 640 GB SATA drives in an Other World Computing external enclosure Mercury Elite Pro Dual) weeks before he expired. He got access to these drives in this enclosure. (External RAIDs are a no-no).
His grieving wife wants pictures extracted from the drives. There is no known back up and the G5 tower cannot be found.
When connecting the external enclosure by FW800 or USB3, the need to format flag pops up. Disk Utility shows one 1400 GB drive "unformatted".    The DIP switches on the enclosure are set to RAID 0.   Several data recovery programs find files, but of course any jpg over 50kb looks like venetian blinds, Tried Data Rescue 3, and the drive depicted as 1280 GB does not divide using expert features and the command key, thus a RAID SET for emulation cannot be formed. See here: See here: http://www.prosofteng.com/blog/recovering-data-from-a-apple-raid-using-data-resc ue-3-by-prosoft-engineering-2/
What to do now to recover jpg's intact and ASAP ?
1. Try another enclosure ?
2. Insert these drives into my personal G5 tower ?
3. Try different data recovery software ?
4. Which software other than Data Rescue will recover from two drives in one external enclosure believed to be RAID ZERO ?
Thank you.

Yes, if and when the tower can be located and retrieved.   In one communication it was described as a G4, in another, a G5.
Turns out that a single external drive was found, so suspect that is the boot drive. In the mean time, am doing an emulated recovery (two sets) using two converter boxes to isolate the two SATA drives, assuming RAID 0 and 32kb striped,   The two sets and because the drive order is unknown.   The first recovery is almost completed.
BTW, OWC rep stated that the two drives cannot be read in their dual SATA enclosure. The rep stated that the drives would have to be reformatted while in thier enclosure, then use. Tried two enclosures to see if they would read the drives independently, and one brand had a silly interface.   One has to put in two "dummy drives" (or ones in which the data is not important) and then convert the electronics (reset switch + power button) to RAID 0.

Internal Drive w/external enclosure....how to format?

OK, I bought a Seagate 1TB drive and an IcyDock external enclosure and now I'm trying to determine the steps for formatting the drive. Anyone have experience doing this that they could provide instructions or best practices? Thanks in advance!

Thanks, that definitely helps. I'm going to go with HFS+, because it will mainly be used for video. I also just stumbled upon this article, which takes me the next step.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306143
thanks again

No boot when HD inside machine, just fine in external enclosure

I have a mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro that's having a strange problem. It crashed hard last night while I was typing something- just froze solid, couldn't force quit, then the mouse pointer stopped.
Shut it down with the power button, started it again, got the "not permitted" symbol (circle with a line through it). Restarted with my Tiger emergency USB boot drive and the hard drive didn't show up in Disk Utility. Whoa! Restarted with a Cmd - Opt - P - R, no change.
I pulled the hard drive and put it in an external enclosure that I have. It mounted just fine on my iMac so I backed up all of my data, then plugged the drive in to the MacBook to see what would happen- lo and behold the MacBook booted just fine with the drive attached in the external enclosure! It worked perfectly!
At this point, I had no drive installed in the MacBook, the MacBook's hard drive was attached via an external USB enclosure, and I booted the machine via the Lion USB rescue utility. I ran Disk Utility thinking that it would have all sorts of errors to report, but the partition showed no problems. I repaired permissions for good measures, then put the drive back in to the MacBook. Again, I got the "not permitted" symbol.
I tried booting from the USB rescue drive- when I went to Disk Utility the drive showed up but the system hanged when I selected it. I restarted with the Snow Leopard DVD inserted but it froze before loading the setup process (I assume when it was trying to mount a file system from the HD).
I run Windows 7 in a Boot Camp config on this machine as well, so just for fun I tried to start from the Windows partition. To my surprise, it booted just fine from Windows. On top of that, once in Windows I had no trouble accessing the Mac partition.
I decided at that point that maybe something had gone awry that I couldn't see and that I should repartition the drive. I put it back in the external enclosure, booted the MacBook from the Snow Leopard DVD, used Disk Utility to repartition the drive, put it BACK in the MacBook and tried to boot from the Snow Leopard disc again- and it crashed in the same place. I rebooted from the Lion rescue drive and tried to use Disk Utility to check the drive- DU crashed when I selected the hard drive.
As a last-ditch effort, I swapped out the RAM and tried again. No go.
At this point, I'm really hoping it's a problem with the hard drive, but seeing as though it works great from an external enclosure, I don't know what to think. I don't have any other 2.5" SATA drives to test in the machine so I have to assume that other than a failed SATA controller, firmware, or other logic board problem, it must be the drive, right?

I dug up another hard drive and tested it just to make sure- same symptoms. A little Googling seems to reveal that this is a common failure.
Will pursue a new cable. Thanks again, folks.

Old iMac hard drive to external enclosure

The logic board on my old iMac (20" core duo...2006 model) but the hard drive is ok. I'd like to put it into an external enclosure but can't get it to fit.
1/ there's an external chip/connector on the side, half way down that blocks it fitting into the enclosure. I've never seen this on a hard drive before. What is this and what can I do to it (ie, remove it, ignore it etc)
2/ When it connects, it soon disconnects itself (a mater of seconds). Does this have anything to do with the chip on the side?
Basically, how can I get this done?
Any help appreciated.

Hi John,
It's a 2.5" drive. I would go with a firewire enclosure so you can boot from it. http://www.macsales sells a good one.

Firewire External Enclosure very hot.

I am wondering if anyone else has a Serial ATA Seagate 200gb 7200rpm hard drive in a Firewire 800 external enclosure. Mine runs very hot in comparison to my IDE hard drives in the same OWC brand Firewire 800 enclosures.
If this is abnormal I would like to know so I can try to do something about it.
If it is normal for this type of drive to run quite hot then I will find a way to cool it down & keep on using it.
Thanks for any advice and/or experiences you have had with these!
PB
Message was edited by: PBookie

You might want to post in the MacBook Air forum, then. This is the Apple Thunderbolt Dislpaly forum...
Clinton

Bus-powered external enclosure, too many choices.

Hi, I'm shopping for an external enclosure for my Macbook's Sata drive as I just ordered a 7200 Hitachi drive as a replacement, I would like the enclosure to be bus-powered, firewire is a good option but not necessary.
I noticed there are a few on eBay with those characteristics, are they any good. Checked the ones on Newegg (even though they don't ship to Canada), and they are a little more expensive. There is also one that seems nice on OWC but it's pretty expensive at 80$.
Not sure if I can trust the ones on eBay, what are you guys using/usggesting ?
Francis.

Hi
I did exactly the same thing a couple of months ago so that I could save money with the white macbook versus the black. I bought a 120GB drive for my iBook and switched it with the shipped one when the machine arrived from the Apple Store. Result = I get a better specified machine than was available on line (and in white) and a removable 60GB drive with bus power, firewire 800/400 and USB 2.0.
To get to the point buy one of these:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=736770&tstart=30
works a dream, is neat and compact, comes with useful short wires, can be powered if necessary, and looks cool.
I searched for a long time and the OWC enclosure was easily the best for me, even to import to the UK (i.e need to add on a few pounds sterling for customs - still way cheaper and better than alternatives).
David
macbook, PM G4s & G5s, PBG4, iMac G4 & G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)
PM G4 & G5s, PBG4, iMac G4 & G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)
PM G4 & G5s, PBG4, iMac G4 & G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Swapping hard drive into external enclosure

Hello. I just installed a hitachi 160gb hard drive in my macbook. No problems, easy as pie. So I wanted to install the original toshiba 60gb into a usb external enclosure, here's the problem. So the hard drive has a plastic part on it that covers the 40 pins. I don't know how to remove this so I can install the hard drive in the enclosure. There's a couple screws, but I'm a little afraid of taking it apart, and not sure if they are holding it in place. Thanks, Mike

Well I see that's the problem. There are SATA ones
and IDE ones, and I bought an IDE. It's too bad that
advertiser say their item will fit any laptop hard
drive. Thanks. Mike
How did I know that? I made the same mistake buying one off eBay. You need one like this.
-Bmer
Mac Owners Support Group
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Can I pull out a RAID drive and use in an external enclosure?

Hi everyone,
I have a Quicksilver with two identical drives formatted as a RAID setup (mirrored) and the G4 has reached its EOL (won't boot). Can I pull one of the RAID drives out and use in an external enclosure? Does the RAID formatting render it unusable in any other configuration? If that is the case, can I put the two drives into an external RAID enclosure?
Thanks in advance for any advice the community can supply!
Cheers,
James

Hi-
Can I pull one of the RAID drives out and use in an external enclosure?
Yes. Not as the original RAID setup, but as a drive, or part of a new RAID.
Does the RAID formatting render it unusable in any other configuration?
No. Just reformat the drive, and it's a regular drive, ready to go.
If that is the case, can I put the two drives into an external RAID enclosure?
A RAID set does not have to be internal. External RAID sets can be created, and successfully used.
Use firewire, or, if SATA, an eSATA connection to PCI controller.....
If the drive is, as you say, EOL, I would write zeros to the entire drive before reformatting.
Give Disk Utility a chance to map any bad sectors......

External Enclosure Not Recognized

Hi,
I replaced my Powerbook G4's internal IDE HDD with a larger one, and put the old one in a USB external enclosure. I cloned the old hard drive onto the new one so my computer would be the same, but with more hard drive space. *I want to use the old hard drive in the external enclosure as an external hard drive.* However, when I plug it in to my computer, no disk image shows up on my desktop. It does show up on other computers.
My questions are:
1. Should I use disk utility to reformat the old hard drive that is in the external enclosure?
2. If so, can I do this from another computer?
Thanks so much for any help

Davidvuk: It isn't clear whether you're talking about just one of your external USB drives or both of them. Would you please clarify which it is? Also, please assure us that you have formatted the drives. You should be able to do so after connecting them to a desktop Mac, if you have one available to use. If either of the drives fails to appear in Disk Utility when connected to a desktop Mac, I suspect there's a bad drive, a bad cable, or a bad enclosure involved.
If neither drive shows up in Disk Utility or System Profiler on your Powerbook, and you're using diffferent cables for them, I wonder whether your Powerbook's USB ports are working. Do you have any other USB device(s) that work when connected to the ports on the PB? A flash drive or a USB card reader is an ideal testing device because it requires very little power from the bus.
If both drives work properly when connected to another Mac, and both USB ports on your Powerbook work with at least some other device(s) connected to them, there's a power problem in the PB or the drive enclosure(s). Assuming you're doing all this testing with the Powerbook connected to AC power, can you test using a different AC adapter?

External Enclosure with out a fan

I bought a 250 gig Sata internal hard drive a while back and want to put it in an external enclosure for my video files to edit off of. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a huge selection of Sata firewire enclosures available. I found a couple from Coolgear.
Using it for video editing, would I be making a mistake using an aluminum enclosure without a fan?
Does anyone have any recommendation of specific enclosures they would recommend. I'm a hobbyist, so price is always a concern.
Thanks for your help.

Thanks for your input Alchroma. Unfortunately, when you throw in the SATA into the mix, you will find the options are very limited, especially with firewire. Most Externals right now are made for IDE drives. Coolgear makes a couple of enclosures, one with and one without the fan. I was very surprised when I started researching for an external enclosure how limited the SATA enclosures were. Kind of regret not going IDE at this time. I just didn't know at the time. Probably the reason is, you don't really benefit from the extra speed a SATA drive has to offer when it is in a 400FW enclosure.

External enclosure

Hi , I am looking for an external enclosure which is getting difficult if you wish to boot to the thing . The new Esata (card) is pretty pricey (if you can find it) and seems a step back from a decent Firewire enclosure . I imagine that there is still one for sale , barter , or can be discovered even as we enter into the unknown of no star trek .
P.S. The Star Trek crack was a joke .
Frederick

The OWC dual drive housing is nice, because of the flexibility. You can run the drives on independent channels, or combine them in a hardware RAID. This type of RAID (though stripe, or RAID 0, and Span only), does offer some real performance advantages over software RAID, should one so desire. From an economic stand point, yes, the dual drive housing is appealing.
As to
so have you an opinion concerning the eSata aside from the 3X cost to Mac hardware ?
Is that eSATA in comparison to firewire?
There is a much higher theoretical performance advantage to eSATA.
_SATA 1.5Gb/s or SATA 3.0Gb/s_
eSATA 150 MB/sec or 300 MB/sec
FW800 80 MB/sec or 100 MB/sec
Of course, the interface connection, bus load, etc., will be the final determining factors in actual data transfer rates. I do believe, though, that if eSATA connection is a possibility in a machine, to achieve highest performance in data transfer to and from an external volume, eSATA is the faster interface.
If you choose to persue the eSATA interface, and are looking at PCI cards, check the Firmtek offerings.

External enclosure woes

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