RAID 1 question for external drives...

Hope this is the right category for this question...
I have a 2-dock external hard drive (Icy Dock with eSATA and USB) and just put in two 2TB drives to handle all my video. When I plug it into my MBP (via USB), the LED indicators - from Icy Dock's shoddy online "manual" - tell me that one drive is "rebuilding" the other.
It is taking a VERY long time - now at about 24 hours, and the lights on the drive are still blinking. My questions:
- When the computer went to sleep, the rebuilding on the hard drive stopped. When I woke up the computer, it began again. Did it start the whole process over?
- The drive shows up on the desktop, and small files copy onto it fine. Can I go ahead and start the big copy of all my movie files before the rebuild is complete, and it'll make the RAID happen when it happens?
much obliged!

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Can I disable trash for external drives?

Hello,
Is it possible to disable the Trash for external drives so that files from external drives are completey deleted automatically, or else moved to the trash on my internal hard drive? The problem that I am trying to solve is, for example, when I download pictures from my camera, if I want to make more space available on the camera, I have to first delete the pictures from the camera, and then empty my trash, since deleting the pictures from the camera only moves them to a hidden folder called ".Trash". I would prefer if I didn't have to empty the trash every time I wanted to free up room on my camera external hard drive.
Thanks very much,
Adrian
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.1)

It isn't without its risks, but another option may be to ⌘-drag the files to the hard drive, which will simulate a "move" by copying the files to the hard drive then deleting them from the external. If something goes wrong during the transfer, it may be difficult in some situations to determine which files were being copied at the time - ie. which ones were potentially corrupted. It might be ok as a cleanup procedure after the files have been imported normally, but then you end up sitting through the process of copying them to the hard drive a second time - you might as well just toss them in the "Trash". Also, if a large number of files is involved, just don't accidentally drop them on the "Desktop" because the "Finder" can't handle it. Obviously, I'm not a fan of the method, but it's there as an option...

Cure for crash after creating a RAID group on external drives?

I tried creating a RAID 1 mirror group on a pair of Western Digital Studio LX Firewire-attached 2 TB external drives (new), and Lion crashed with the RAID code on the stack (according to the crash report). The system always crashes the same way if I connect even one of the drives, at boot time or later. The RAID group was of the whole drives, not a pair of partitions. I was using a Mac Mini, but I expect my MacBook, also running Lion, will crash the same way, if I try to attach the drives to repartion them. I suppose I can attach the drives via USB to a Linux box to clobber the partition tables.
Is there a way to set up RAID 1 on Lion which does not lead to an immediate crash?
I have been a happy Mac user, but shipping with RAID 1 being so badly broken is really careless. I expect a lot better.

I set up a mirror raid on two external USB drives, and set to 256k under osx 10.7.5 then got the full melt down
and the same every time i tried to reformat the drives.
I did notice a slight moment of time when opening disk utility before the crash!
The following worked for me.
Start the computer, insert just one of the USB or Firewire drives then open disk utility.
Here is the key point as fast as you can select the drive icon as soon as it appears on the left and hit the erase option
don't worry about the type of format select the t hit the erase button as quickly as you can and again as the prompt comes up are you sure you want to erase the disk.
Then repeat again on the second drive and then start the raid set up over again with blocks set at 128k.
Probably advised to unmount all other drives so you do not accidentally format the wrong drive given this is all about haste.
Really hope this helps and think it through as to how it relates to your set up.

UPS Energy Saver on MacBook Pro for External Drives

A search here has shown this topic come up before -- such as at https://discussions.apple.com/message/1886738#1886738 and https://discussions.apple.com/message/8162836#8162836 -- but I can't find a resolution, so I'm bringing it up again.
I have multiple FW drives connected to my MacBook Pro. The MBP is connected to an APC Back-UPS RS 1200. OSX does not make the UPS Energy Saver autoshutdown preferences available on the MBP, the reasoning being that a laptop shouldn't need UPS autoshutdown because it has its own battery which is likely to run for far longer than the UPS would.
That's all well and good for the MBP itself, but it doesn't account for the multiple FW drives which are attached to it for backups and other purposes. In the event of a power outage, without UPS autoshutdown, the UPS will run down, and the drives will abruptly power off, exposing them to potential data loss and damage.
It's also not a solution to suggest that I manually power things down once there's a power outage, because the power can go out while I'm away for more than the few minutes of UPS battery back up time. The only real solution is to have UPS autoshutdown available on all portable machines. Unless and until Apple offers a (surely very simple) OS update to make that happen, I'm still interested in a solution.
APC's own software for autoshutdown stopped being updated long ago, so there is no version compatible with Snow Leopard.
The only potential solution I've found so far is http://www.apcupsd.org/ -- but its documentation is overwhelming and it appears that it may need other supporting software, a fair amount of Terminal usage, etc., all making it not very user-friendly for the very simple usage I'd want to make of it.
Does anyone know of any other solutions, software that can run on a MBP to add UPS autoshutdown functionality?
Re: Apcups, is anyone using it successfully on a MBP? If so, does anyone know if the version listed here -- http://mac.softpedia.com/get/System-Utilities/Apcupsd.shtml -- is a simple application that I can easily install and configure like regular Mac apps? If yes, then I'll likely be very happy with no need for the following question. If no, can anyone provide simple instructions to set up Apcupsd to do what I want?

"You are not doing anything on the computer so no files should be writing to the drives."
Big assumption there. With today's notebooks so capable of acting as desktop substitutes, they are often left running unattended to complete demanding tasks overnight or while the user does other things.
To be able to suspend such activities and gracefully power down an external drive or drives in the event of a power outage, the Mac would have to have instructions from each third-party application or process that is running about how to interrupt its activity safely and without jeopardizing the integrity of whatever hard disk directories are in use. Then it would need to unmount the drive(s) and, if they were bus-powered drives, turn off the power to each of them at the port to which it was connected. I bet it would be possible for all app developers to write such instructions into their apps' code, but where's the incentive for them to do so? This isn't a feature that most users would gladly pay extra for, I suspect, and the cost of adding it to apps that don't have it now and testing it for reliability and proper function under all conceivable circumstances would not be trivial.
If the drive(s) were AC-powered, the computer wouldn't be able to power them down itself -- the UPS would have to do that, or simply leave them on and power them until its battery was depleted or the AC was restored. It wouldn't matter which happened as far as the drives and their contents were concerned, because once the computer stopped using them, powering them off would be safe at any time.

Best practice for external drive?

A really basic set of questions, for which I ought to know the answers:
with four external firewire drives connected, three of them daisy-chained to one FW800 port, the fourth to a second FW800 port, do I:
a) when shutting down the computer, eject them, or can I just shut down the computer then shut down the drives?
b) when ejecting the drives, is there a particular order (eg, the drive that is actually connected to the computer of the three which are tied together being last to eject?)
c) when sleeping the computer, is it all right to leave the drives spinning and let them sleep when they realize the computer is sleeping?
d) when starting up, start the drives before turning on the computer? I've actually forgotten this, and started the drives after the computer was up and running, and it doesn't SEEM to have any ill effect, but am I doing something dangerous?

OS X is pretty tolearant of whatever you do. Just don't turn them off or unplug them unless you either turn off the computer or eject the volume by dragging to the Trash.
So
a) shut down the computer then shut down the drives: yes
b) doesn't matter with my FW drives, but I suppose there could be some that will not pass the FW signals if it is shut off. I believe if they are built correctly they should work like mine and the FW communication will pass through the devices that are powered down.
c) OS X should be in control of drive sleep. Some HD manufacturers have firmware that conflicts with OS X and insist upon sleeping the drives when they ought not to, or vice versa. When sleeping the computer, just ignore the drives. Do not shut them off though or else OS X will scold you for having removed them unexpectedly. They should sleep on their own, but if their firmware insists otherwise, there is nothing you can do about it.
d) This doesn't matter at all, unless (obviously) you need to boot the computer from one of the external volumes.
Read about OS X file system journaling - it should ease your mind about potential corruption: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2355

3rd Party SATA raid cards for internal drives?

All --
Apart from the discussion as to if RAID actually benefits a home desktop system, I am wondering if anyone has the lowdown on using 3rd party SATA raid cards to support the INTERNAL hard drives on the Mac Pro series?
My Mac Pro is still slated to be built at Apple and for now I have the minimum memory and HD spec being requested at Apple, with the plan to upgrade the memory and drives from OWC or another vendor.
I've toyed with the idea of utilizing Disk Utility's software RAID features (e.g. RAID 0 for scratch disks, RAID 1 for boot, RAID 0+1 for all else.) I've also toyed with the notion of searching for a hardware raid solution which would allow me to transfer the internal SATA cable runs from the motherboard to a host adapter card for an internal multi-channel experience (with options to create and break mirrors to external devices for backup purposes.)
So....
Has anyone experience or utilized 3rd party hardware raid controllers which can connect to the internal HD bays? Are there limitations to this (ie, does the boot drive HAVE to reside off the internal motherboard controllers, or can an internal hardware controller successfully boot the system) of which ought be noted?
Finally, in the event that a host adapter card cannot drive the interna bays, can anyone give feedback to hardware SATA cards to power external drive bays with support for Disk Utility (to allow RAID1 pairings of internal drives to external snapshot-backup drives)?
Thanks for your time,
Ian Poulin
Richmond, Va

I am wondering if anyone has the lowdown on using 3rd party SATA raid cards to support the INTERNAL hard drives on the Mac Pro series?
There are many 3rd party controllers that support the internal HDs if an internal iPass connector is used. The problem is that some are bootable but most are not.
The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 and the HighPoint RocketRAID 4320 are bootable. However, the system cannot be installed via the Apple DVD. Instead the user needs to clone a boot drive with the proper drivers to the boot volume on the controller and then boot from the 3rd party controller.
The other issue I found is that these controllers do not support Boot Camp. If Boot Camp is desired, my recommendation would be to leave the internal HDs on the Mac Pro internal bus intact and use the 3rd party controller for external storage. This method provides four internal bays that are bootable, support Boot Camp and can be used for system backups. I use the 3rd party controller for external storage for large RAID sets and hot swapping hard disks.
With the internal bays intact and external hot swap RAID storage available the user can support Boot Camp, multiple system volumes and large external RAID sets. From my experience using a 3rd party controller with the internal HD bays always has some limitations. The user usually does not realize it unit later when Boot Camp does not work or the computer fails on a system upgrade or the controller does not work at all with a new version of Mac OS X.
Staying with the standard internal Mac Pro bay configuration will be the best configuration to avoid compatibility issues with future versions of Mac OS X. It is rumored that the new Snow Leopard may require 64-bit drivers. If that is the case, I would expect most if not all existing 3rd party controller drivers to fail. Some drivers will be upgraded after a few months while others may not. Having the internal Mac Pro SATA controller intact should at least allow the Mac Pro to boot if my guess about compatibility issues is correct.
can anyone give feedback to hardware SATA cards to power external drive bays with support for Disk Utility (to allow RAID1 pairings of internal drives to external snapshot-backup drives)?
There are a large number of external controllers that work with Disk Utility. Here are some of my favorites.
1. FirmTek SeriTek/2SE2-E and the SeriTek/5PM
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata5pm2se2.html
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/5pm/
2. Sonnet Tempo E4P
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/sonnet/mac-pro/
3. DAT Optic eSATA_PCIe8
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/datoptic/pcie8/
Have fun!

Looking for external driver hp555s updatewon't work with windows 8

hi, my dvd/cd rewritable external drive will not work with windows 8, is there an upgrade for this writer, had it for a few years, was working fine with win.7 but can use with win.8, need help!!!! Thanks Gloves54
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Hi, My external dvd/cd driver problem has been resolved, I chatted with the support assitants from Acer (my laptop with the problem) they gave me a microsoft driver link which fixed my problem. my dvd/cd external drivers are now recongnized by my computer and can be used. Thanks to Honor Student for trying to help me with my problem. Happy Holiday's!
Gloves54

Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 for external drive

my mac has only 256GB ssd store so sometimes i need a litte more. i have also windows OS that uses at least 100gb. i bought another 240GB SSD disk.
i want to connect an extermal stroge for windows and i want install my programs and games in it.
My question is that will "USB 3.0 enclosure with SSD" be enough speed for programs and games or should i connect "thunderbolt enclosure with SSD"

The problem of Thunderbolt and Windows is that you need to install the Windows support software for your MacBook Pro in Windows to be able to use your external drive in Windows through Thunderbolt.
Apart from that, Thunderbolt is slightly faster than USB 3.0 in most cases (see > http://www.macworld.com/article/2039427/how-fast-is-usb-3-0-really-.html), so if you can afford a Thunderbolt enclosure, go for it. If not, USB 3.0 is enough and, in most cases, cheaper

Disable spotlight for External Drives

I have 5 macs, and several USB and Firewire drives. Most of these external drives are plugged into different machines from time to time. None sit permanantly in any machine (because most of my machines are laptops).
I'd like to prevent Spotlight from indexing my External drives.
I know I can (after plugging in a EXT drive), use the privacy function in the Spotlight Preferences. But with a dozen or so external drives (HDD and Thumb) on 5 machines, that's too much work each time I plug a drive into a machine.
I read that the existence of a ".metadata_never_index" file prevents Spotlight indexing. I assume this works, but it's hard to tell for sure, because the moment I plug a drive in, my machine seems to start indexing faster than I can create this file. So I wind up with a .Spotlight-V100 directory. I was hoping that OSX would delete this for me after I set Privacy or add the ".metadata_never_index" file. But it does not. It may be that I have to delete it manually (probably because Privacy is a COMPUTER setting (not on HDD setting).
QUESTIONS:
Does the ".metadata_never_index" file supported by OSX (Mavericks and MtnLion).
Can I delete the .Spotlight-V100 directory in my EXT Drives, without the risk of causing a problem?
If I put a ".metadata_never_index" file in /Volume, will it effectively prevent indexing on any mounted drive, without affecting the Macintosh HD indexing?
Is there an non-invisible equivilent to ".metadata_never_index" (so it's more obvious when indexing is turned off).

Glad you found that helpful.
The Privacy listing for a given external only disappears when the external isn't attached; it reappears when it is attached so either a local record of "Don't Index" is only shown as necessary or, more likely, that record is on the external and is read as part of the mounting process when it's connected. While the process of putting each external on each Mac's Privacy list is a pain, it should only be necessary to do it once. Whether the Don't Index flag is Mac specific, so that Mac 1 doesn't want that external indexed but Mac 2 does, is another question.
I do think the Don't Index flag or file is separate from the partition's logical name because, when I erase the partition in preparation for a new backup clone, I don't change the name of the partition, and the name of the device to be cloned doesn't change either. Rather, it may simply be a Spotlight related file that gets erased along with everything else.
Fortunately, I don't have to worry about Spotlight; apart from the Privacy listing, I have all of the Search Results options unchecked, so there's very little to index on the boot partition. Spotlight can't be turned off altogether though because it interacts with the App Store regarding purchases and downloads. For finding things, I use EasyFind, which, while not able to find content in documents, looks inside of everything else, including Packages and hidden System files, and does it on demand without having to index anything. Another advantage of that is, by not tinkering with OS files, including those associated with Spotlight under the hood, when a new OS changes how things work, there's less risk of a deeply hidden self inflicted bug.

Step by Step Guide needed for external drives.... Help!

I know this has probably been done to death already but I can't seem to make any of the suggestions work in this case. I guess what I need is someone to tell me like I'm a 5 year old on how to do this.
I want to move my music library to an external drive as my main drive is getting full. I have iTunes on my c: drive and want to move my music to an external drive (h:) so it can play and be stored there. I have tried a couple of times to move it and tell iTunes where to find it but for some reason a couple of things happen...
1. iTunes changes the location back to the c: drive, even after I have pointed it to a folder created on the external drive.
2. if it does look to the external drive it doesn't find the library... the music is there but iTunes doesn't display it in the library.
I must be doing something really wrong or this isn't possible... any advice would be a great help.

You might find this article useful: iLounge - Transferring your iTunes Library to Another Drive

Best setup for external drives and backup

I'm using Aperture to organize several thousand photos. I've gotten good advice her before about how to get started on this. I'm not a professional and I'm not an experienced user of Aperture, so don't assume a lot of knowledge when you answer. I'm wondering what the best way to set up the file storage would be. I use a MacBook Pro, so obviously that's out for storage, and financially, purchasing a more powerful desktop is out for the time being. I was thinking of purchasing a mirror drive system, like this: http://www.newertech.com/products/gmax.php
But then, there still remains the problem of backing up the photos in case of a fire or theft, etc. I have many of them on DVD, but not with all the metadata that I've added. Can I back the external drives up to a cloud-based storage system through the wireless on the MacBook?
Or, is the answer none of the above? What recommendations do you folks have for managing this?

more:
Paula-
Mirror drives are very much less than ideal for images backup. Mirroring occurs in real-time, so errors, breaks, etc. simply get copied. With images work (unlike fanancial work, for instance) we do not need real-time backup we just need regular accurate backup. Just have 2-3 external drives and rotate them regularly, always having one drive off-site (could be in your car or whatever). Back up manually rather than automatically so that you can be reasonably certain that the backup is not backing up something that just broke.
I suggest the below workflow. Note that most important is that original images from the camera card are copied to two locations before reformatting the card and before importing into Aperture or any other images management application.
Original images never change, so I prefer to manually copy them to two locations asap after capture: one location is the computer drive and the other is an external backup HD that itself gets backed up off site regularly. That assures me that "the pic is in the can." Until two digital files exist on different media I do not consider the pic in the can.
Then reformat the card in-camera, not before.
The Masters then get imported into Aperture from the Mac internal drive by reference (i.e. "Storing Files: in their current location" on the Mac internal drive). After editing is complete (may take weeks or months), from within Aperture I relocate the referenced Masters to an external hard drive for long-term storage.
I do use Time Machine routinely on the MBP, but for the daily-volatile activities going of the MBP. I prefer not to have TM be my backup-of-originals protocol. Instead TM backs up the Mac internal drive on the TM schedule and I back up original images asap based on my shooting schedule. Also the TM drive is a different drive than the drives used for long-term original image files archiving.
TM does back up my Library because the Library lives on the Mac internal drive but I do not assume that TM works for Library backup. I back the Library up to Vaults (on the same drives I put archives of Masters on) independent of TM. IMO one should back up image files and back up Vaults manually after verifying that what is being backed up is not broken, because automatic backup will just back up a broken Library or whatever.
Note that Masters need only be backed up once (but to multiple backup locations) and that backup should happen immediately after copying to the hard drive from the camera card, before involving Aperture or any other images management app.
Sorry for the redundant verbosity above but some was copied from previous posts. Also, I reinforce what Léonie said about DVDs. DVDs are way too slow, unreliable, etc. Instead rotate multiple hard drives to achieve redundancy.
HTH
-Allen

Icon for external drive??

I've been noticing when booting off of my external drive, the icon for the external drive doesn't appear at the top of the icons in the right hand corner of the finder. Should this happen? It's a little confusing to determine which disk is the startup.
Thanks,
Richard

Richard Skover1 wrote:
I've been noticing when booting off of my external drive, the icon for the external drive doesn't appear at the top of the icons in the right hand corner of the finder. Should this happen?
no. it used to always do that but there were a lot of complaints and this was changed in leopard. now it lets you arrange the drives as you want and keeps finder preferences on reboot.
It's a little confusing to determine which disk is the startup. to see the boot drive go to apple menu->about this mac. the current startup disk will be listed at the bottom.
Thanks,
Richard

I have Home Movies from iMovie to back-up. What format for external drive?

Hello,
I have Home Movies imported into iMovie 11 on my iMac 3.06 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo.
I am saving the cpmleted movie projects onto an external hard disc. A Seagate 1TB.
I have had problems with file sizes as I keep getting the message that a movie project is too large for the medium. It seems that I can't store anything in HD.
I've looked at the disc and it's formatted as MS-DOS (FAT32)
Am I right that this imposes a maximum file size that I can save?
If so I have looked at the Disc Utility on my iMac and I can see that I can reformat the external drive.
I have a choice of -
Mac OS Extended (journaled)
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, journaled)
MS-DOS(FAT) is this the same as MS-DOS (FAT32) it already is formatted as?
ExFAT
Windows NT Filesystem (Tuxera NTFS)
I'm guessing I should choose the MAC OS Extended (jounaled) or the Mac OS Extended (Case- sensitive, journaled)?
The Seagate Hard Drive is model SRDOSPO
I don't understand the differences between the above formats and would like help on chosing the right one for my Home Movies.
I also have an Apple TV3 which I use to watch the movies on my tv.
Are the home movies stored both in the iTunes file on my iMac, so I can see them via AppleTV, and the external hard drive.
If so can I just use the external hard drive without having these large files filling my iMac disc?
Hope that all makes sense.

The difference between case sensitive and non-case sensitive is self-explanatory. Non-case sensitive iis easier to work with as it can avoid confusion with files names.
The others are weird and wonderful/partly useless Microsoft formats only of interest to Windows users, or those who want to have both Apple OS and Windows on the same computer. Not all of them can be read by a Mac at all, some of them have inconvenient file size limitations.
More info here:
http://formatharddrive.net/types-of-hard-drive-formats.html
Message was edited by: Klaus1

Will OSX software Raid-0 on external drive be regonized elseware?

Are RAID setups created in Disk util recognized in other computers. Say i have 2 external drives (over eSata on my 08 mac pro) in a raid 0 from disk util, can I plug these two drives into another mac pro and have them work?
Basically, are software raid setups from disk utilily readible from all macs?

Both systems would have to have their own controllers or ports, but yes, they should move and work just the same on both.
There are Port Multiplier cases and controllers, and there are the 2 ODD ports people use, or direct connect SATA external controllers.
You can even create a RAID internal or external and move it and it will work, or change the drive bay and order of your drives, the RAID will still work and be intact.
What often doesn't work are eSATA/FW or eSATA/USB cases.
Mac Pro Discussion focus on using and expanding is here:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=194

Recommendations for external drive?

I'm looking for recommendations for an external hard drive to add to my iMac G5, 17" flat panel. I want to have enough GBs to use it as a backup AND to be able to store graphics such as my photos, videos and the like — all the components of making DVD movies. Ideally, I will be able to use the external to transfer things from my computer to other computers.
My G5 has a 250 GB hard drive. I'd like the external to be large enough to contain things I haven't even thought of yet.
I'm not that savvy when it comes to the workings of computers, so ease of use/simplicity is paramount.
All recommendations (and reasons why) will be much appreciated. Thank you.
ccCarol

Get a firewire drive and use SuperDuper! to make a clone and then regular backups (it's easy). As far as what make of drive, I have always had good luck with LaCie, and there are others who swear by Maxtor or OWC, which you can find here. In terms of size, get the largest one you can afford, in your case I would think at least 500GB. Transferring your video etc can be done to a second partition on your external drive by simply dragging and dropping the data. Partitioning is straightforward, using Disk Utility.
Let us know what you decide, hope this has been helpful,
Miriam

RAID 1 question for external drives...

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