Mac Pro External eSATA Drive

I am looking for a 2TB external hard drive for my Mac Pro (Quad Core 3GHz) and have a question. The Mac Pro has a 500 GB internal boot drive and three internal 500 GB drives RAIDed into a single 1.5TB drive. I would use an external 2TB drive for backing up the 1.5TB daily with Apple's Backup and will use it for Time Machine when I install Leopard. The computer is used primarily for Final Cut Pro Studio.
Costco has a Western Digital external 2TB drive with Fire wire 800 (800mb/s) for $600 and a Western Digital external 1TB drive with eSATA (3000mb/s) for $300. Either way it's $600 for 2 TB. I would need to purchase an eSATA Extender Cable to utilize the two extra SATA ports found on the Mac Pro's logic board for $25.
*The question is*: Could I connect two of the 1TB eSATA drives with the eSATA Extender Cable and make them a single 2TB RAID with Apple's Disk Utility... and would you recommend doing that over getting the 2TB drive which is 1/4 the speed and the same price?
Please see the details below and thank you for your help. I asked the Geniuses at three different Apple Stores and got 3 different answers.
2TB - My Book Pro Edition II (Firewire 800) $600
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=341&language=en
1TB - My Book Home Edition (eSATA) $300
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=357&language=en
eSATA Extender Cable $25
http://www.newertech.com/products/esata_cable.php

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External hard drives for mac pro, external hard drives for mac pro

my laptop always says there is not enough space and I notice my hard drive it out of room, what would be a best external hard drive that will support the Mac Book Pro?

huge storage, low cost, high quality, very small and portable.
BEST FOR THE COST, Toshiba "tiny giant" 15mm thick 2TB drive (have several of them, lots of storage in tiny package)    $100
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Connect-Portable-HDTC720XK3C1/dp/B00CGUMS48    /ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1390020791&sr=8-3&keywords=toshiba+2tb
best options for the price, and high quality HD:
Quality 1TB drives are $50 per TB on 3.5" or $65 per TB on 2.5"
Perfect 1TB for $68
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Portable-Hard-Drive/dp/B005J7YA3W/ref=sr_1_ 1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379452568&sr=8-1&keywords=1tb+toshiba
Nice 500gig for $50. ultraslim perfect for use with a notebook
http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio-Portable-External-Drive/dp/B009F1CXI2/ref=s    r_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1377642728&sr=1-1&keywords=toshiba+slim+500gb
*This one is the BEST portable external HD available that money can buy:
HGST Touro Mobile 1TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive $88
http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Mobile-Portable-External-0S03559/dp/B009GE6JI8/ref=sr    _1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383238934&sr=8-1&keywords=HGST+Touro+Mobile+Pro+1TB+USB+3.0+7 2 00+RPM
Most storage experts agree on the Hitachi 2.5"
Hitachi is the winner in hard drive reliability survey:
Hitachi manufacturers the safest and most reliable hard drives, according to the Storelab study. Of the hundreds of Hitachi hard drives received, not a single one had failed due to manufacturing or design errors. Adding the highest average lifespans and the best relationship between failures and market share, Hitachi can be regarded as the winner.

Mac book pro + external hard drive plus desktop with ethernet router combo

Can anyone advise - for or against / solutions that might be possible as I'm considering time capsule.
Currently
Desktop = Mac Pro - 230GB hard drive no wireless card.
One ethernet port going to router into which my broadband is piped. Out of the router - ethernet to plug in lap top in other room (hubby not so found of wireless).
Back up = 500GB external formac drive (noisy and vibrates) connected via fire wire. All my photos and music go direct to the formac drive (are not on desktop or laptop).
I do backup of documents from desktop to the external hardrive manually.
I have a mac book pro which I access the internet by the the ethernet (but don't think I can file share because of the router which I think just pipes the internet to both computers).
*What I would like to do*
1) Access documents from the desktop vire wireless when working on laptop.
2) Continue to store photos and music without clogging up my desktop hard drive.
3) Get a quieter external hard drive (been noisy since day 1)
4) Easy backup of of photos and music (at the moment only one copy exists on hard drive which I am concerned about (other than DVD).
5) Turn wireless off when not working on laptop - hubby concerned about privacy and I work from home so have confidential material I have to guarentee is secure.
Can any one point me to whether time capsule and or other bits would meet my needs?
Thanks - Lou

1) is doable I use that functionality Even from Pennsylvania to Michigan
2) I use the TC as backup for my primary hard drive although I always use two back up hard drives for my primary. I use the Finder not Time Machine.
3) The LaCie d2 or the quadra work fine with TC. They are quiet and sleep appropriately.
4) is doable and related to your one.
5) secure your router and wireless setup is not a problem.
You can also use the setup of the external to interact with ATV. Like streaming movies to ATV

Is it OK to use USB 2.0 connection for Glyph external drive and Mac Pro as project drive?

Is it OK to use a USB 2.0 connection for Glyph external drive and Mac Pro as project drive? I was told by Sweetwater tech support to use Firewire, but both the FW400 and FW800 connections crash my audio interface software mixer (Presonus' "Universal Control" software).
Both Firewire connections also create a 10 second hang for each Command-Save that I do.
USB 2.0 for the external drive seems to be working so far, but is there some reason I should be wary of using this as my go-to project drive? In other words, I am imagining that there was probably some definite reason that the tech support guy mentioned not to use it. But maybe not. It's a brand new Glyph. In any event, it's nice to have the 10 second hang eliminated, and I was just looking for some advice, since digging into the Presonus software issue could take some time.

If you have a mac pro, why not stick the external HDD inside via one of your many SATA cables & have it run 9 times faster than your USB?
Or stick a HDD CADDY in your mac pro, so you can slot in a full sized 3TB HDD for recording, and when you are done, pull it out & slip it in an external enclosure if you need to take it places?

Backing up Lion Mac Pro 3.1 drive

Looking into backing up Lion Mac Pro 3.1 drive / Lion, Recovery HD / disk assistant.
In Mac Pro I have Lion in drive bay 1 (297GB) and Windows 7 in bay 4 (465GB).
I use Windows Image backup to USB external drive partition and have Lion Time machined to second partition therein.
I have an unmounted (spare) 297 GB drive.
Question is: can I occasionally do complete Lion disk utility copy of Bay 1 to (spare) mounted in drive bay 2 which I
would remove and only ever use if Lion drive was damaged? Would it be a bootable duplicate of Lion and Recovery HD?

To get a Recovery HD on your "spare" 297GB drive, I think Apple expected you to use Lion Recovery Disk Assistant. If you have an existing Recovery HD on your Main Drive, this little program can create the semi-hidden partiton and copy the contents of your existing Recovery HD to another drive, such as an external drive:
Lion Recovery Disk Assistant

OWC Mercury Elite Pro External Hard Drive - Share with Windows Machine?

Hi,
Others on this discussion have recommended the OWC Mercury Elite Pro External Hard Drive. Dumb question: my live-in girlfriend has a Dell XP laptop, and I have a MacBook. If we purchased an OWC hard drive with both firewire and USB, can we both use the external hard drive?
Thanks, David

You can certainly use their drives between a Mac and a PC. As mentioned, either format it FAT32 witht he 4GB file size restrictions or partition it.
You can also use a program called MacDrive. It give a Windows machine that ability to read and wtite to HFS+ partitions. I have used it and it works nicely.
There is a timed demo, so you can try it out and see if it meets your needs.

Brtand New Mac Pro Internal Optical Drive Won't Work

Actually, this is a two parter. My new Mac Pro internal optical drive rejects every disk I insert. It won't read anything. Should I get it replaced? Part two: I have an external Sony optical drive which was working up until yesterday. Today, I was going to go through some disks and now THAT drive is rejecting everything. I had it connected via USB and changed it to a 400 to 800 firewire. I tried to read some disks again and still they get rejected. What can I do to correct these problems?

I am having the exact same problem with my mac pro since upgrading to 10.5.7 neither of my drives will read CD or DVD and it states that no burning software was found in the system profiler

FiOS HD-DVR crashing since adding external eSATA drive

After the recent firmware update, I added an 2TB external eSATA drive to my FiOS DVR. I'd really been looking forward to this because our DVR had been perpetually 90+% full. After a couple of reboots, the drive was recognized and showed as a second DVR at 0% full in the DVR Status menu. Just to make sure everything worked, I scheduled a bunch of recordings to make sure it was utilizing the new drive.
A few days later, we found that the DVR had erased several of our recordings because it was out of space. Checking the DVR status again, the new drive had disappeared.
After a couple of reboots, it appeared in the status menu again, and the DVR started recording to the external drive. But a few days later, my wife couldn't find the recordings. Turns out it had disappeared again.
This pattern has repeated itself several times over the last couple of weeks. On two occasions, the DVR has completely frozen while we were in the middle of watching something, necessitating a complete reboot in order to watch TV, and interrupting any recording that was going on in the background. Each time, at least 2 reboots has been required before the eSATA drive appears.
Needless to say, this whole thing is a disaster. I spent a ton of money and the result is poorer service quality. What can I do to fix this?

After a few minutes searching I found the link of recommended drives.
http://www22.verizon.com/ResidentialHelp/FiOSTV/Other+Hardware/eSATA/129841.htm
Here's a snipet from that page...
Which Verizon FiOS TV DVRs are compatible with eSATA devices?
The following FiOS TV DVRs are compatible with eSATA devices:
Motorola QIP 7216
Motorola QIP 7232
Cisco CHS 435 HDC
Which eSATA external storage devices can I use with my FiOS DVR?
Verizon recommends the eSATA hard drives below for use with FiOS DVR. Customers choosing to install other drive types will assume the risk of compatibility with FiOS DVR and Verizon will not assist with compatibility or performance issues should they arise.
Western Digital – WDBACS5000EBK-NEVZ – 500GB
Western Digital – WDBACS0010HBK-NEVZ – 1TB
Western Digital Retail – WDBABT0010HBK-NESN – 1TB
I'm not sure why this happened...'Your post has been changed because invalid HTML was found in the message body. The invalid HTML has been removed. Please review the message and submit the message when you are satisfied.'
I'm assuming that the above drives were the only one tested at the time. We users can add to this list if we want. Anyone game?

Success with adding an external eSATA drive to a Verizon FIOS DVR

August 4, 2012 - Success with adding an external eSATA drive to a Verizon FIOS DVR
I just upgraded from a Comcast DVR to a Verizon FIOS DVR. I upgraded because my old DVR was limited to 500GB (1/2 TB) on the internal drive and the new FIOS DVR allowed for a much larger external eSATA drive. Selecting a viable external drive for the FIOS DVR was easier said than done. The three drives listed on the Verizon web site as compatible with FIOS DVRs are no longer manufactured by western digital and are not available on the market.
The DVR that I received from Verizon was a Cisco "CHS 435 HD DVR" that came with a 500GB (1/2 TB) internal drive. This is one of their "Multi-Room DVRs" that allows other set top boxes (not DVRs) to watch videos recorded on it.
I selected a western digital "WD30EURS" eSATA disk drive because it was a follow on product to one of the three listed as acceptable by Verzion on their web page and it was 3TB in size. I ordered from amazon.com for $170.99. This drive is a "bare drive" so it does not come with an external encloser or a eSATA cable.
According to the Western Digial web site this is a AV-GP drive: "These drives are designed to last in high temperature always-on, streaming digital audio/video environments such as PVR/DVR, IPTV, and video surveillance systems."
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/AAG/ENG/2178-771131.pdf
I got a "Macally G-S350SU Hi-Speed eSata/USB2.0 External Storage Enclosure for 3.5inch SATA HDD" to hold the drive for $34.39. I chose this one because it does not use a fan that could cause continious noise. The box is made out of metal so it cools itself as long as it is exposed to air (not covered up). This box comes with an external power supply that has a small transformer that plugs into a wall outlet.
Then I needed a eSATA cable. I got a "StarTech 6-Feet Shielded External eSATA Cable M/M (ESATA6)" for $6.50 and a 3-foot version for $5.90. I went with the longer one so that the cable would be less likely to become accidentally unplugged if I need to move the drive or the DVR. The cables and the drive houseing came from the same Amazon provider so it saved me on shipping. The drive came from Amazon/Western Digial directly but they do not have external housings or eSATA cables on that site.
The total cost was $255.56 including shipping for all these items.
I went with the largest (3TB) drive from western digial's AV-GP line to avoid a future upgrade from a smaller drive to a larger drive. There is no way to copy videos from one external eSATA drive to another drive because they are formatted by the FIOS DVR in a propriatary format. That would mean that any future upgrade would require losing all recorded files during an upgrade. That also means that there is no way to back up the contents of the drive to protect yourself from hard drive failure.
The installer who setup the DVR did not want me to plug in the drive while he was there and explained that I was on my own when I attached this kind of personal device to the DVR. When I plugged in the new eSATA drive it was automatically discovered. I was asked by the DVR if I wanted to format the new drive. I answered yes and within 2 hours the drive completed formatting. I did not watch the boring format so it could have finished faster.
When I started recording new videos they go directly to the external drive automatically and avoids the internal drive. It had no trouble recording two HD shows and playing a recording at the same time. I now have 20 hours of HD video recorded and the 3TB external drive is 17% full. So far my experience with the external drive has been great. No problems or issues. Learning the new remote control, new DVR menu system, and web browser control of the DVR from a laptop is another story. It will take some time to figure out how to make all the new features work.
It took me a while to figure out how to make this work since the verizon web site made useless suggestions and pointed me to products that are not available any more. I could not tell if this really would work until I plugged it in and then I was pleasantly suprised that it did. I have had this working for 3 days without any issues. I hope this post makes it easier for you to add an external eSATA drive to your DVR.
Here are the three items ordered from Amazon to make this work:
Western Digital 3 TB AV-GP 3 TB SATA 2 Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Driv...
Macally G-S350SU Hi-Speed eSata/USB2.0 External Storage Enclosure for 3.5inch SATA HDD
StarTech 6-Feet Shielded External eSATA Cable M/M (ESATA6)

You are right. I can only access 2TB of my 3TB external drive. That gives me a total of 2.5 TB counting the internal (0.5 TB) and external (2.0 TB) drives. This is a significant improvement over the just the 0.5 TB internal drive. I have not been able to find a reason for this limitation. Cisco and Verizon do not mention any limits that I can find. I hope that a future BIOS upgrade could provide access to more space but this would probably require me to reformat the drive and lose everything recorded.
I paid $170.99 for the 3 TB WD30EURS drive at amazon. I could have gotten away with spending only $116.99 for the 2 TB WD20EURS drive. Not worth returning at this point so I will stay with it. Makes me glad I didn't buy the most expensive 6 TB external monster drive available from another company.
I bought: 3TB drive: Western Digital 3 TB AV-GP 3 TB SATA 2 Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive WD30EURS by Western Digital
I could have bought: 2TB drive: Western Digital AV-GP 2 TB SATA II Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Internal Hard Drive - WD20EURS by Western Digital
Details of what I learned:
The external 2 TB drive now has 41 hours of HD video recorded and claims to be 34% full (66% free). My estimate would allow me to have aprox 120 hours of HD on the external drive (2TB) and 30 hours of HD on the internal drive (500GB) for a total of 150 hours of HD. This will keep me happy for the near future.
There is a hidden "diagnostic menu" that is not normally accessible or documented by CISCO or Verizon. This menu has a lot of interesting info on the inner working of the DVR. There was an obscure reference to this menu on another forum.
To access this diagnostics menu:
1) Get the DVR into normal live tv mode (no menu, no guide, no pause ...)
2) Go to the Cisco CHS 435 HD DVR (not the remote control) and press these buttons on the front of the DVR: Press both the Left Arrow "<-" button and "OK" button at the same time and hold them both down for aprox 5 seconds.
3) The "Verizon FiOS TV Diagnostics Menu" menu will appear. The menu can then be used by the remote control.
4) I chose "D03 Memory / HDD" and then "Hard Disk Information" and finally "OK"
A five page disk report appeared. With a little bit of interpretation I discovered:
The Internal Drive is know as "drive 1/hdc1" has 461 GB total space with 454 GB free.
The External Drive is split into two partitions "hdc2" and "hdc3" (aka two mount points).
"drive 2/hdc2" has 1007 MB total with 317 GB free
"drive 3/hdc3" has 1007 MB total with 974 GB free
The normal DVR menu has an "Eject" feature that allows you to stop the external drive and make it safe to remove it from the DVR without losing anything via an unplanned drive removal. This can be found at "DVR" button on remote then "Settings"->"External Hard Drive"->"Eject".

Attaching an external eSATA drive to my Mac Pro?

Need to attach a LaCie 1TB eSATA drive to my Mac Pro for video editing with Final Cut Pro.
So can I just buy a regular PC based eSATA card to conect it to the Mac Pro. Like this one on Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sitecom-CN-042-eSATA-PCI-Card/dp/B000UDUBPG/ref=sr113?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1245579334&sr=8-13
Any other known setup issues?
Kevin

Buy Mac Pro compatible. I'd start looking at Sonnet Tempo E4P
http://www.sonnettech.com
http://www.macsales.com
http://www.amug.com - click on reviews, dozens of on SATA controllers.
And please, please, skip and avoid LaCie (use it for backup) and go with native SATA enclosure. They don't even work well with even Sonnet Tempo or others like E2P. (There is a footnote on Sonnet site AND on OWC!)
Lots of threads on external SATA products.

External eSATA Drive to Mac Pro

Hi, Guys:
I'm trying to determine if I need a separate eSATA card to connect my external 2T Fantom Green Drive to my Mac Pro (mid-2012) of just an extender cable. Newer Technologies has an extender cable that seems to have worked with older Mac Pros, but I can't find any indication that it would work with the newer ones. The drive mfg'ers were no help. Thanks for any information.

The extender cable will work in any Mac Pro, but it uses the optical drive SATA ports. On early (before 2009) Mac Pros, both ports are free since the optical drives were PATA. Newer Mac Pros use SATA optical drives. so only one port is available for external SATA drives if you have one optical drive. If you have two optical drives there will be no ports left.
The optical SATA ports require the drive to be powered on and connected when the computer is booted.

2013 Mac Pro external drive options...?

So I have my new Mac Pro and it is pretty good....! I have a 500GB drive which is just so dam fast, but it is only 500GB.... and I'm coming from a 2010 Pro with 6TB of storage via a Drobo FireWire 800 RAID (still bummed that a pro machine shipped in 2010 with SATA 3 and USB 2, but I getting over it now!).
Anyway, I need to replace the Drobo. They have a Thunderbolt model, but it is Thunderbolt 1 not 2. LaCie also Thunderbolt 1. Now I know that Pegasus have a Thunderbolt 2 RAID box. So here is my question - does a 7200rpm drive top out at less or more than Thunderbolt 1 speeds? What about an SSD drive (given how prices are going I've gotta assume that I'll be able to afford an SSD RAID in a few years.....
I'm mostly a photographer, but I do edit a few videos per year. Speed and efficiency are really important to me.
What are people using? I've never used Pegasus and don't know anyone who has, but my Drobo has been solid for 4 years now and I would not hesitate to get another. Thanks in advance.

Maybe I am just too cheap, but I look at that OWC setup with a ThunderBolt to eSATA, and for US$229 (empty), you get a two-drive ThunderBolt-adapted enclosure. That has a lot more appeal than US$1400 for a Promise enclosure.
Thunderbolt made affordable...
OWC MercuryElite Pro+
Lacie ThunderbolteSATA Adapter
RAID Ready | eSATA x 2
They are also showing a new (not yet available) two-drive enclosure with dual ThunderBolt and USB-3, coming soon.

Backup pro mac to external hard drive

I want to backup my pro mac to an external hard drive using time machine. Does time machine keep user accounts (mine & wife ) separate or does it copy everything as one lot of data ?

Time Machine will copy everything on your Mac, from as many accounts as you have.
It keeps everything separate, so that almost anything can be restored at the file level.
There is a "Black List" to which you can add Directories or files you do NOT want backed up.

MB Pro & External Hard Drive - Best format for Mac/Windows use?

My external hard drive is currently formatted as FAT 32. I need to use it between Mac and Windows. However, I have many files that are 4 GB or larger.
Should I reformat as HFS? Will that at least be readable on Windows?
I thank you in advance for any thoughts.

There's no really good choice.
Regardless of the filesystem you choose, you will need additional software to read/write it on one of the operating systems. MacDrive for Windows will permit you to read/write HFS+ formatted volumes on Windows -- it's $50. MacFuse + NTFSng allows Mac OS X to read/write NTFS formatted drives -- it's free, but a little awkward.

Two Macs, one external boot drive (not at same time)

I'm in a weird situation where I travel b/t two cities during the week and am looking to have a computer in each. Have been doing the laptop thing, but it's too heavy to drag everyday and too slow for the video editing (I'm a filmmaker) I need to do now. So, I have a 1TB SSD and am looking to make it a boot drive (via USB 3 or Thunderbolt) for two different Macs. Right now I'm looking at two iMacs, but I might want to make one of them something else, possibly a new or older Mac Pro.
So, would I be able to run both Macs with one external drive? Also, would I have any issues if I go with two different kinds of Macs? Thought maybe there would be an advantage to having the same with connection issues of some sort.
Thanks for any help!

Let me ask: how are you getting your two OS's on the external drive?
For one thing, if I understand you correctly, you want one OS on the external and use it on both Macs? That, according to the licensing agreement, is not allowed (see excerpt below); you're allowed one backup copy officially. And, secondly, you cannot boot a Mac with an OS version earlier than what it came with, so it would depend on the build of your Macs (and the exact build version it came with). My initial thought was that you clone your internal hard drives to the two partitions on the external and run them separately.
For now, just a guess on your Q #1 - not sure, depends on where it originated (see above for not booting with an earlier version) and, I prefer cloning FROM the internal system TO the external (again, because of build versions/firmware).
Q #2: see above re. software licensing agreement.
Q #3: not sure at this point
As for the SLA - if the OS is preinstalled, the license is for that computer only:
Here is a link to the SLA:
http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/
And, FWIW: no, once you mark an answer, it cannot be undone - hopefully, that won't matter and someone else will pop in with a brilliant idea.....

Mac Pro External eSATA Drive

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