Anyone experienced with “failing to mount” RAID 1 external drive?

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Anyone experienced with “failing to mount” RAID 1 external drive?

Posted by Dave Gage on January 2, 2012 at 7:25 pm

I was hoping I could get a hold of OWC this morning, but they are closed until tomorrow. I spent an hour yesterday doing google searches, but didn’t come up with any helpful info.

I was trying to get some work done this weekend when I found that I couldn’t get my 2 drive RAID 1 setup to mount. Fortunately, I just backed everything up to other external drives last week, so I’m in good shape with the data. I haven’t taken it apart yet, but it sounds like both drives are spinning up. Since it was able to mount last week, I haven’t made any changes to the OS or software on the MBP.

Drives: 2 x 1TB Samsung 7200’s
Enclosure: OWC Mercury Elite-Al Pro
Age: about a year old (hasn’t been used much, but it started as my capture drive for FCP 7)
RAID software: Disk Utility
MBP i7 (early 2011)

Here’s what I’ve tried:

1. Swapped out FW800 cable
2. Tried both FW800 ports on enclosure
3. Tried with FW400 port on enclosure
4. Tried with eSata card slot.
5. Plugged in 2 other external enclosures (non-RAID) into MBP and they are working fine with all ports.
6. Disk Utility and System Profiler don’t see it.
7. Repaired Permissions

Any suggestions as to what to try next? This was my first foray into using RAID, so I don’t have much experience with troubleshooting it.

Thanks,
Dave

Dave Gage replied 14 years, 7 months ago 4 Members · 6 Replies
6 Replies

Oliver Peters
January 2, 2012 at 8:44 pm

Could be a bad drive. Try Disk Warrior.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
Dave Gage
January 3, 2012 at 3:09 am

Oliver,

I guess I’ll wait until tomorrow and check with OWC since I haven’t had a working copy of Disk Warrior since the 90’s and it’s going for about $100 these days. Hopefully, they’ll know the right questions to ask me to determine if it’s a bad drive or RAID software issue or enclosure failure. It did sound to me like both drives are spinning up, but I suppose that doesn’t necessarily mean they are good either.

Thanks,
Dave
Tony Brittan
January 3, 2012 at 4:29 am

Try a different power supply if you’ve got one. I had a Lacie once that was doing that and they sent me a new supply and it worked perfectly! No idea what was wrong but was told that the old one must’ve no longer been putting enough out. Worth a try.

Posted from iPad, please excuse typos!

Tony Brittan
Island Shore Productions
Dave Gage
January 3, 2012 at 4:53 am

Tony,

I have an enclosure that looks virtually identical from about a year prior, but the plug that goes into the device is a different size and form factor. Oh well, I will mention it tomorrow though when I speak with technical support. I appreciate the idea though.

Thanks,
Dave
David Eaks
January 3, 2012 at 10:58 am

Have you removed the drives from the enclosure since the last successful mount? Maybe the drives were put back in the wrong slots. If so, switch them back.
Dave Gage
January 4, 2012 at 6:04 pm

Update:

I got OWC (MacSales) on the phone yesterday and they had no solutions for me other than taking the drives out and testing them. I was fortunate in that since this was a RAID 1 setup and both drives were physically working, when I popped them into a Voyager bare drive unit, both drives were just fine. The enclosure was about 4 months out of warranty so they couldn’t take a look or replace it without a fee that was pretty close to buying a new one.

I have enough external enclosures that I can make it work until the new Thunderbolt enclosures come out. No official word, but it sounds like they are hoping to see them Feb. or March this year.

Thanks,
Dave

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