External multi disk enclosure

I am looking for suggestions of finding an external multi disc enclosure for my itunes library as the library is approaching 2 teribytes. I would like the drive too have both thunder bolt and usb 3 connections as i will be upgradeing my 2008 mac pro if apple puts out a new one this year. Should i use ssd or sata drives?

An SSD system that large will be very expensive, so you're probably going to have to go with SATA. You really don't need SSD performance for an iTunes library in any case. I've been quite satisfied with the drives from Other World Computing and from G Technology, but there are a number of good drive brands available.
Regards.

Similar Messages

Search for perfect external hard disk enclosure / RAID1

Today, am using stand-alone enclosures connected to a Mac Mini (running SL) via FW400 and USB.
Am storing my media on a 2 TB WD Green HD and am looking for redundancy (RAID1) while keeping the form factor down (wife approval factor).
Plan to add a second 2 TB drive, but need to find the ideal RAID enclosure. Have been looking into this for some time, but when I find what I think will work, the reviews aren't very favorable.
Here are the requirements:
- Supports SATA drives (minimum 2)
- Hardware RAID1 support
- Firewire 400 (800 preferred)
- Low noise/low heat (passive cooling preferred)
- Power Management (turns off when HTPC is off)
- Small(ish) form factor (e.g. under 8" x 8" x 15" (H x W x D)
I'd consider using Mac OS X Software to create the RAID but have read too many reports that indicate it is problematic. Also considered NAS (vs DAS) but want to use the array as a time machine disk also so it would need to be mac friendly.
Can any one chime in with some hands-on recommendations for an enclosure/RAID1 that meets my requirements, or experiences when using software RAID1 on the Mac?

Langley James Rock wrote:
Can any one chime in with some hands-on recommendations for an enclosure/RAID1 that meets my requirements, or experiences when using software RAID1 on the Mac?
Take a look here:
http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-safe.cfm
I have just ordered one. I have two G Safe drives, they work well with the Mac. They go to sleep (or not) according to the Mac settings.
I have ordered a third module so I can always keep a copy off site.
They are available 500 Gig to 2 Tb. Interfaces eSATA, USB, FW 800.
From personal experience I would not recommend software Raid for safety. My two excursions into software raid resulted in tears.

Unable to capture files into external hard disk because of 'drop frames '

I haven't been able to capture footage from my DV camcoder thru firewire to an external hard disk in FCP because i get a message saying 'drop frames were detected'.
This happens when i selected this external hard drive as the scratch disk in FCP.
When i deslect it and select my user hard disk as the scratch disk, the capturing works perfectly. But i just want to capture all my capture files into the external hard disk, not my user hard disk.
The external hard disk's speed is 3500 - could that be the problem? Is it too slow? Its connected thru USB and it is Mac Os Extended Journaled. Its got 250gb of space, so that's not the issue.
Can anybody help me?
Thank you.

No, its a Panasonic gs180, a really good camera.
The camera itself is connected to my computer through firewire. Its the hard disk enclosure that is connected to my emac through USB. Anyway, i'm sure that's not the problem, casue like i said, the capturing works fine when i use my user hard disk as the FCP scratch disk.
The problem i have is when i try to capture footage from my camera to the external hard disk enclosure. When i press 'capture now' and press play, the playback stutters and a messsage appears saying, "drop frames detected" and the capturing stops.
I feel like i need to adjust something in FCP itself - like a preference or something - just not sure what.
Thnx for your suggestion though and if you know what i should do, please let me know.

Disk Utility error -9972 with new external hard disks

My Powerbook 15" (1.67MHz, 1.5 GB RAM, 100GB drive) is partitioned into two volumes:
- OS-X 10.3.9
- OS-X 10.4.3
Each volume has its own Disk Utility:
- Disk Utility 10.4.4 v.145.7 (part of OS-X 10.3.9)
- Disk Utility 10.5.3 v.198.5 (part of OS-X 10.4.3)
In order to make backups I use an external hard disk enclosure:
- Macally PHR-100AC, firewire + USB2
Recently I bought two new 250 GB hard disks and built one of them into the external enclosure (jumper setting to master) and connected it with firewire and formatted the drive as Extended Journaled. After that I made Verify Disk and got bad error messages and could not repair the disk.
Funny thing (reproduceable):
Using Disk Utility in OS-X 10.3.9 and formatting as Extended without Journaled: NO errors
Using Disk Utility in OS-X 10.3.9 and formatting as Extended Journaled: volume bitmap errors
Using Disk Utility in OS-X 10.4.3 and formatting as Extended without Journaled: bad errors
Using Disk Utility in OS-X 10.4.3 and formatting as Extended Journaled: bad errors
Using Disk Utility in OS-X 10.4.3 and formatting as Extended without Journaled and verifying using OS-X 10.3.9: bad errors
Bad error messages:
- incorrect key length
- the underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)
- stopped repairing ... volume could not be repaired
I tried:
- to build the second new hard disk into the enclosure: same errors
- to install new firmware 4.73 into enclosure (compatible to 10.3.9): same errors
- zeroing out all data: same errors
- to use Techtool Pro 4.0.6 (compatible to 10.4): same errors
- to restart the mac using both partitions: different errors as described above
- to disconnect, shut down, restart the external enclosure: same errors
- to use another firewire cable: same errors
- to format the external disk again and again: same errors
- to find any discussion or knowledge base or faq: nothing
Thanks for any suggestions.
ibond

Your post on -9972 was very helpful. Thank you.
In the meantime I bought another enclosure (Macally PHC-500BC) and installed the same firmware 4.73 and tried to use it.
Surprise, surprise! Everything is ok with no errors. All my hard disks are working perfectly.
I suppose my 100AC is a faulty enclosure and needs replacement.
Thanks for your help.
ibond

How do i retrieve file vault protected files from an external hard disk that used to be my mbp's hard drive? the hard disk got corrupted and will no longer boot. I put it in an enclosure and attempted to copy my files but failed because of FV encryption.

This external hard disk used to serve as the main drive of my mbp. It got corrupted and the OSX would no longer load. I upgraded to a 500gb hd and used the old hd as an external drive. I tried to copy my files but i could not access them because of the filevault encryption. 110gb of hd space appears as used which means that my files are still in the drive. Is there a way to retrieve these files? thanks

According to your post, you're using Leopard, so FileVault only encrypts your user folder (unlike Lion). On the mounted external drive, in your user folder, you should see a file called username.sparsebundle, with username being your user name. Double-click that file to open it and it should prompt you for a password. Type in your password and the file will mount as a volume in Finder. You should be able to copy all of your files over.

External hard disk for use with quicksilver 2002 and intel imac 24"

i am wanting to purchase an external hard disk to be used with both a g4 and an intel imac 24".
i am considering a seagate barracuda 500gb or 750gb and purchasing an external case separately.
interfaces - usb2, firewire 400 and 800.
Do I need a case with the "oxford chipset" to have it work.
Are all seagates compatible these days.
I was looking at a ultra ata100 hard disk. Will this disk connect automatically to the enclosure or will additional cables be required
Is the Ice Cube Generation II Ide enclosure ok to use.
Appreciate any help given
dual 1 gig G4, Intel 24" Imac Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Hi-
The Ice Cube uses an Oxford chipset, (part of the external housings onboard controller) so it should be fine. The Oxford chipset has been shown to give the best compatibility and performance, thus being an desirable feature.
http://www.pccasegear.com/prod2307.htm
Using a Seagate Ultra ATA 100 drive should give you good, quiet, reliable service. There are no problems with the Seagate ATA drives.
Using the drive and housing with firewire will give you the best results, and firewire will allow you to use a bootable backup on the external drive, should the need be.
The housing comes with all the necessary cables to connect and use your external drive.
Insert the hard drive into the housing, connect the power and the firewire, format the hard drive, and you are ready to go..........
G4AGP(450)Sawtooth, 2ghz PowerLogix, 2gbRAM, 300gbSATA+160gb HD, ATI Radeon 9800 Mac OS X (10.4.8) Pioneer DVR-109, LaCie 160gb, 23"Cinema Display, Ratoc USB2.0, Nikon Coolscan

Disk Utility detects wrong size on my external FW disk...

I have a external firewire disk that I want to use with my macbook pro. It is a Maxtor Onetouch. It has previously been used with linux and had some ext3 and xfs partitions on it. Works like a charm on win/lin and is detected as a 250GB disk. But when I hook it up to my macbook Disk Util says it is 128GB only. I can create a 128GB partition on it.
I have 2 external disks. I have previously changed the HD inside both of those boxes without any problem on win/lin. The HD in question is a WD 250GB disk I just bought. I tried to put it in my Lacie FW enclosure only to see that it is still detected as an 128GB disk

Did you format it using the GUID partition map selection? AFAIK, MS-DOS and FAT-32 format might be causing your problem.

External FireWire Disk will not boot

Hi Forum,
after some installations (OS 10.4.9, latest security update and Qucktime 7.1.6 I canot boot from my external disk (Lacie) connected to FireWire 800 port. The Apple shows up but then nothing more happens. Does anyone have a hint?
Thanks
Oliver

Add me to the list also. I had an external firewire disk as a RAID mirror for my boot disk. After a system crash (and some problem with my internal disk) I couldn't boot from the firewire stripe. This used to work.
I've tried creating a single-disk "degraded RAID pair" on the external disk and cloning the internal disk to it (using Disk Utility "Restore"). The cloning works fine but I can't boot from the copy. This is how I originally set up the RAID pair (clone, boot from clone, add internal disk to RAID group). This used to work. I bought a new firewire disk and it has exactly the same problems.
My original firewire disk was an Acomdata E5. My new firewire disk is a Coolmax Gemini CD-311 enclosure with a Hitachi 250GB deskstar inside.
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Can't format external hard drive enclosure

I connected a 250gb external hard drive enclosure to my mac osx 10.3.9. I was told that it was formatted to windows and that i would have reformat it to mac.
I was given instructions to go to Disk Utility, select the volume and click on the partition tab, but a partition tab didn't appear when i pressed it.
I checked out the info for the volume and this is what it gave me:
Name : New Volume
Type : Volume
Disk Identifier : disk1s1
Mount Point : /Volumes/New Volume
File System : Winows NT Filesystem
Connection Bus : USB
IO Content : Windows_NTFS
Writable : No
Capacity : 232.9 GB (250,056,705,024 Bytes)
Free Space : 232.8 GB (249,976,606,720 Bytes)
Used : 76.4 MB (80,097,792 Bytes)
Number of Files : 48
Number of Folders : 0
Permissions Enabled : Yes
Can Turn Permissions Off : No
Can Repair Permissions : No
Can Be Verified : No
Can Be Repaired : No
Can Be Formatted : No
Bootable : No
Supports Journaling : No
Journaled : No
Disk Number : 1
Partition Number : 1
Final Cut Pro wouldn't let me use it as a sratch disk because it says it is on write-protected.
Does anyone know what i have to do to get the volume to work.
Thank you.

Jayden:
Here are some directions for formatting and partitioning a HDD:
Partitioning a Hard Disk Drive
Boot from the install CD holding down the "C" key.
Select language
Go to the Utilities menu and launch Disk Utility.
Select your HDD (manufacturer ID) in left side bar.
Select Partition tab in main panel.
Select # of partition in pulldown menu above Volume diagram.
Select 1 partition at a time and resize. (you can type size in the size field in main pane).
Type in name in Name field (usually Macintosh HD)
Select Volume Format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Click Partition button at bottom of panel.
Select Erase tab
Select each volume, in turn, under Manufacturer ID.
Select on Security Options button.
Select Zero all data. (This process will map out bad blocks on your HDD. However, it could take several hours. If you want a quicker method, don't go to Security Options and just click the Erase button.)
Quit Disk Utility.
Dr. Smoke's FAQ Backup and Recovery has some hints on partitioning.
Please don't hesitate to post back with further questions or comments.
Good luck.
cornelius
Message was edited by: cornelius

HDV editing from an external scratch disk?

I use FCE to edit High Def video from my HCR HC1 and at the moment have my scratch disk on my internal hard drive. In the past i stupidly put it on my USB 2.0 external hard drive but quickly found i had problems with dropped frames etc. during playback. Can anyone give me feedback on using an external fire wire hard drive for a scratch disk (with HDV) and playback results/any problems encountered?
Thanks.

Hi Ross, I don't currently use an external scratch disk, only my internal 500Gb disk, but my experience may still have some relevance. My external 250Gb USB is used purely for copying files around via Finder.
I use two HCR-HC3 camcorders to do multi-cam edits. I have found that I get an occasional dropped frame during playback, especially if I am scubbing the timeline too agressively, or have another app in the background.
Good luck with the comments from other folk.

External Hard Drive Enclosure won't mount

Hi
I have a Western Digital Caviar WD3200JD 1TB SATA hard drive inside an external startech enclosure
http://www.startech.com/item-download/SAT3510U2B-35in-USB-to-SATA-External-Hard- Drive-Enclosure-with-One-Button-Backup.aspx
It won't mount on my mac, it won't recognise it in disk utility either
I mounts fine on a PC running Vista. I have formatted it as NTFS but it will still not shoe on my mac
Anything else I can try?
Thanks!

my 12 inch powerbook laptop body was no good, but the hard drive was. I had a powermac g4 tower with a bad harddrive. After researching, I found this site and I mounted the laptop harddrive into the desktop and boom! my old laptop drive booted up on the desktop powermac. here is the link. a 3 yr old can install this it is way too easy, plus it cost 99 Cents. way cheaper than buying an enclosure.
http://www.b2cshop24.com/en/hard-drive-ide-25-to-35-adapter-converter-for-laptop .html

Recommended external hard disks for macbook??

Hey all,
I am in need of an external hard disk for my macbook, preferably one of decent size cause I wil be traveling in Europe from Sept to Dec. I was looking at the smart disk one.... ideas on what ones to look at and where to buy?
thanks!
erik

I heartily recommend the Mercury drives from OWC. They are small, bus powered and very reliable due to the use of the Oxford chipset.
If you do not mind carrying around a power adapter, then the Mercury Elite Pro drives found HERE come pre-configured up to 500GB and if you want you can buy the enclosure only and add a 750GB drive.
That's a lot of storage!

I am using Windows 8.1 i have an External Hard Disk and one drive is now inaccessible due to sudden power failure few days ago. Now it shows "Data error (Cyclic redundancy check)". I want all my important files and Pics. How ?

Hi,
I am using Windows 8.1
I have an External Hard Disk i have partitioned it to 4 parts.
One drive is now inaccessible due to sudden power failure while listening Music from that drive few days ago.
Now it shows "Data error (Cyclic redundancy check)".
I tried all the procedures provided here like
chkdsk /f, diskpart, rescan etc
but no result :( (i mean all processes failed. They could not detect the drive).
Please help me to get those data, pictures and project files.
thank you

Then why aren't you posting this in the Windows 8 forums found @
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/home?category=w8itpro
This is a Windows 7 forum for discussion about Windows 7.
Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. ”

Firewire external mobil disk hard drive is no longer recognized

After last system update, my firewire external mobil disk hard drive is no longer recognized. Any solutions?
Why does MacOS go backwards... gets worse over time?

Thought you could use this info about getting FireWire to work! I have had no trouble with any update Apple puts out (the Combo update is what I normally choose). Are you running 9.2 like your specs. say? You are in the Tiger forum, so I'll assume you haven't updated your Macs specs.
First, you should always Repair Permissions in Disk Utility before and after any update; I would do that now. If you installed your update with FireWire plugged in, your Mac may not recognize it anymore.
Try resetting your FireWire ports by disconnecting all FW devices, shut down your Mac and unplug it from AC power (wall socket) for 30 minutes. plug it back in and try FW.
If that did'nt work, download the combo update from this site (yours may be corrupt), not Software Update, disconnect all firewire + USB devices except keyboard + mouse, Repair Permissions, re-install update, Repair Permissions again + try. Yours may be the 10.4.5 Combo update. Others reading, download the Combo that applies to your system.
If that still did'nt get it Zap the PRAM. While restarting Mac hold down the following key combo Command-Option-P-R. Keep holding those keys down till you hear the second start-up chime, then release.
For those of you with Macs that are not PowerBooks or iBooks, a bad internal battery can cause FireWire to not be recognized, so make sure it's good!
Good Luck!
Cheers!
DALE

Disk write cache corruption on an external hard disk

Recently I purchased an external hard disk, to put all of my pictures of my baby due to space limitations on my internal laptop drive. Since my Canon camera 10 megapixel pictures take up a ton of space this was occurring at an alarming rate. My intention was also to back up to DVD but never got to it. This is both a comment and a question.
Now said baby, is getting really good at pulling cords etc. He managed to do this on the external drive firewire cable. As far as i know the drive was not in the process of actually writing. However, after a few minutes and trying to re-plug the drive the OS crashed with a Grey Screen of Death hardware error that tells you that you need to push the power button..
This apparently corrupted the drive's directory. Upon reboot the drive would not mount. Since there were time machine backups on the drive too Diskwarrior was not able to reconstruct the drive in the built in memory available on the computer. Time machine stores millions of files and Diskwarrior apparently wants to keep it all in memory at once. Since my computer has 2GB you would hope that would be enough but apparently not. So that failed. Other utilities seemed to be able to find the files but not restore the directory. I also took it to the apple store they were not able to recover it.
I have to say this is extremely distressing, and hard to believe that a simple accident like this could cost the loss of thousands of pictures. I did send it to a rescue company but that was expensive but I think apple needs to do something about this situation.
On Windows there is a way to disable the write cache for external drives. This is not available for Mac OS X. This would prevent this rather common occurrence of a plug accidentally becoming disengaged when the drive is not in the process of writing. This reduces the odds but I still think apple, in order to become clearly superior, needs a better solution.
I know Apple has experimented with ZFS would this not eliminate this possibility of this kind of disaster? Is this in Snow Leopard desktop? I know they are thinking this is a business customer focused technology but clearly if it can eliminate this kind of thing then I think it is extremely useful to their non server customers. Perhaps there are other ways of dealing with this issue but ZFS is designed to deal with these issues. HFS+ is extremely fragile to disk corruption.
I know my situation is not that uncommon and this is not the first time this has happened to me with an external drive. You would think I had learned. I hate to think of how many other people have had the same thing happen to them.

Disabling a write cache would not help you with the problem you are having. Besides the write cache is on the hard drive and operates independently of the operating system. But nothing can protect you from disconnected an external drive improperly, and if the drive is in the process of being written to, and the problem comes from directory corruption, not file corruption, as in the case you have described, disabling a write cache would not have made any difference.
For the future the magic word is: Backups.
< Edited by Host >

External multi disk enclosure

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