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Cache-A Pro hardrive share issue
I am attempting to back up footage to LTFS from hard drives that are larger than 2 TB. Burried somewhere in the cache-A manual it says that the cache-a cannot RELIABLY (meaning, sometimes it will work and sometimes it will not, which has been my experience) read drives that are directly connected AND larger than 2 TB. All my drives are larger than this so this was a problem. I was told to connect through the network instead so I tried but had to luck with that. I could not get it to share or mount. At this point I figured I had some kind of firewall issue which I have no control over (company firewall). Out of frustration I decided to by-pass the network all together and connect the unit directly to a laptop. So far so good. Cache is talking to laptop, laptop taking to cache. I now have my hard drive connected to my mac and am unable to get the cache-A software to see it. I tried sharing my hardrive via AFP and even tried sharing via SMB with no joy. My question is has anyone else been able to share their hard drive via AFP (preferably) or even SMB successfully and been able to mount the drive through Cache-A software? I have Snow Leopard and am not using Lion, which I know has issues with AFP. I can’t get Cache-A support to get back to me most of the time. Help!!!!!!
Maryann
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8 Replies
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I should probably mention my hard drive was formatted Mac OS Extended.
Maryann
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Hi Maryann,
Sorry that we didn’t return your call soon enough.
Please note that all of our release notes clearly state:
Issue: Direct attached HSF (Macintosh) volumes cannot reliably access data on volumes over 2TB in total capacity.
Workaround: Attach such large volumes to client workstations and use network sharing.This is not just buried in the manual. The ‘reliably’ part comes from the fact that data on a larger volume may or may not be within the first 2TB data space – if it is, we can see it, if it isn’t we can’t. This is a limitation of Linux Open Source software, however, we are working to address it in an upcoming release.
I assure you that afp works but our case notes indicate that apparently you are trying to share afp without a router which in fact won’t work.
Regards,
TomTom Goldberg
Cache-A Corporation
602 Park Point Drive
Golden, CO 80401
mailto:tom.goldberg@cache-a.com
https://cache-a.com -
Hi Maryann –
I feel your pain, and fully understand your question. Here is how the Cache-A works for our clients.We have a newtwork setup. This does not mean that we have a single ethernet cable coming out of the Mac computer and into the Cache-A.
This DOES NOT WORK – not for you, and not for me. You have a nice simple network setup at your place. All your computers are on the internet, right ? There is a cable modem coming from your internet provider. This goes into a router, and the router goes into an ethernet switch. All your computers – all your Mac’s are plugged into this ethernet switch. That is how you get on the internet.
Well – plug in your Cache-A into this switch, and within a few minutes, the Cache-A will appear.Log into your Cache-A. NOW, once you are in, you can assign a manual IP address to the Cache-A. Now you can put it on a private network with all static IP addresses, so you DONT have to rely on a network router to get into the Cache-A. We do this all the time for shared storage systems. The Cache-A works perfectly.
But again, I know your pain. We want to do trade shows with a new Cache-A and a single computer – we can’t, unless we set it up first for a static IP address.
This setup on a network must happen with a router first. Of course, you can just stick a PC keyboard and monitor on the back of the Cache-A, and do a setup with their Linux interface. That will work too.
Bob Zelin
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Bob,
Thank you as always for jumping in and helping provide explanations.
I thought I would post that we have discovered that, in fact you don’t need to have a router to get connected directly to a Cache-A (or any other network device) from a Mac.
When you enable Internet Sharing from the Mac’s System Preferences > Sharing panel, the Mac becomes a DHCP server itself. It doesn’t matter if you don’t even have an active Internet connection, just make sure that you are sharing some service on your Mac (i.e. Airport) with your Ethernet port.
Maryann has reported that this got her working and might be a useful trick for anyone to know.
Tom Goldberg
Cache-A Corporation
602 Park Point Drive
Golden, CO 80401
mailto:tom.goldberg@cache-a.com
https://cache-a.com -
Thank you all for your responses. I am working it out and doing some more testing.
Maryann
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Tom writes –
When you enable Internet Sharing from the Mac’s System Preferences > Sharing panel, the Mac becomes a DHCP server itself. It doesn’t matter if you don’t even have an active Internet connection, just make sure that you are sharing some service on your Mac (i.e. Airport) with your Ethernet port.TOM –
PLEASE be specific (be verbose) on exactly how to do this.
I am in System Preferences>Sharing. Are you telling me that if I simply check Internet Sharing, and then “Share your connection from (ethernet 1)” (for example, from the pulldown menu), then this turns the Mac into a DHCP server, and I can do the configuration this way ? If this is true, that is GREAT NEWS !Bob Zelin
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Bob,
Your understanding is correct – a picture is as verbose as I can be:
At least this has worked for me with Snow Leopard in several instances. Maryann advises that it worked for her with Snow Leopard but not with Leopard (10.5). I haven’t tried it with Lion yet.
W’d like to hear what you learn when you try it.
Tom Goldberg
Cache-A Corporation
602 Park Point Drive
Golden, CO 80401
mailto:tom.goldberg@cache-a.com
https://cache-a.com -
I eventually got it to work for snow leopard and leopard. I can’t really explain why I was having problems with leopard. I tried multiple times and all of a sudden it just started mounting after about an hour. Weird. I have all computers talking now and now that I know the trick I have them talking on the network as well. No need for direct connect.
Thanks!Maryann
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