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To eSata or not to eSata… (there is a question in there somewhere)
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[Dave Gage] “It’s a small app from OWC called “Oxsemi Configurator”. I believe it gives me the choice of RAID 1 or 0. I’ve been with Macs since the Mac Plus and worked for a while in IT, but this is my first personal experience with RAID. Have you heard anything good or bad about the enclosure itself, OWC Elite-AL Pro? I remember seeing this enclosure recommended back in the FCP 7 days.”
OWC is a good company. My experience has always been good.
What exact enclosure do you have? It’s a double enclosure with one sata port?
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “OWC is a good company. My experience has always been good.”
That’s good to hear. My recent experiences with eSATA cards and enclosures have been mixed, but I’ve been happy with everything else, especially RAM upgrades ($107 now for 16GB).
[Jeremy Garchow] ”
What exact enclosure do you have? It’s a double enclosure with one sata port?”This is it:
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Mercury-EliteAL-Pro-RAIDRAID 1 setup with two Samsung 1 TB drives. (I’ve had great luck with the Samsung drives. Very quiet, and haven’t had one die on me… yet).
This is the eSATA card I bought from them-
(Whoops, they don’t have it listed any more. After our conversation here, I wonder if they had complaints and removed it or, they could just be out of stock.)Dave
[By the way, I saw a couple of months back you had a newborn. Congratulations! I hope all is going well. I have 2 newborn boys that just turned 8 and 10 last week. It goes very, very quickly.]
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[Dave Gage] “RAID 1 setup with two Samsung 1 TB drives. (I’ve had great luck with the Samsung drives. Very quiet, and haven’t had one die on me… yet).
“If the raid1 is split, can you format two drives separately? Meaning, even though there’s one connection, can you see two drives when you aren’t in raid1?
[Dave Gage] “[By the way, I saw a couple of months back you had a newborn. Congratulations! I hope all is going well. I have 2 newborn boys that just turned 8 and 10 last week. It goes very, very quickly.]”
Ha! Thanks so much, and congrats on your 8 and 10 year old newborns! 😉
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[Jeremy Garchow] ”
If the raid1 is split, can you format two drives separately? Meaning, even though there’s one connection, can you see two drives when you aren’t in raid1?”I think I understand your question, but maybe not. If I take them out of the enclosure, they are obviously identical and Carbon Copy Cloner sees them as the same drive if both are mounted on the desktop simultaneously. If I throw one into the NewerTech Voyager, all is normal with each drive. This particular enclosure will only do RAID, it’s not possible to use the drives separately within it (isn’t that called JBOD? If it is, it won’t do that.)
[Jeremy Garchow] ”
Ha! Thanks so much, and congrats on your 8 and 10 year old newborns! ;)”I just got back from a bike ride with them. For me, it gets more fun the older they get. They’re like little people now. Who’d of thunk it?
Thanks,
Dave -
[Dave Gage] “I think I understand your question, but maybe not. If I take them out of the enclosure, they are obviously identical and Carbon Copy Cloner sees them as the same drive if both are mounted on the desktop simultaneously. If I throw one into the NewerTech Voyager, all is normal with each drive. This particular enclosure will only do RAID, it’s not possible to use the drives separately within it (isn’t that called JBOD? If it is, it won’t do that.)”
I see. So no JBOD.
It sounds kinda shady, Dave. There is no reason the drives should be failing like that, it seems like something is amiss. I looked at the website and it says it comes with SoftRAID. What I don’t understand is if it’s a hardware or software raid.
I have never used that particular enclosure before but my guess is that FCPX has nothing to do with it. Even if you weren’t using FCPX and you started moving files around, it would probably fail.
You shouldn’t have to run Disk Warrior that much.
If you put in two brand new drives in that enclosure, what do you have to do?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “What I don’t understand is if it’s a hardware or software raid.”
I couldn’t tell you. I never really got that deep into it. It seems to be a hybrid if that makes any sense.
[Jeremy Garchow] ” I looked at the website and it says it comes with SoftRAID.”
That SoftRAID doesn’t sound familiar. My enclosure is about 2 years old now, it might be a slightly different model and software.
[Jeremy Garchow] ” Even if you weren’t using FCPX and you started moving files around, it would probably fail.”
That very well could be, but since it’s dedicated to FCP X, I will likely never know.
[Jeremy Garchow] ”
You shouldn’t have to run Disk Warrior that much.”I don’t know if I need to, but it’s very fast to run and it makes me feel like I’m getting my money’s worth out of it. I suppose once every few months would be fine.
[Jeremy Garchow] “If you put in two brand new drives in that enclosure, what do you have to do?”
Go to Disk Utility and format each drive to Mac OS Extended (non-journaled in this case). Open the OWC Config app: Use raid 1 check box only (everything else should be left blank).
—I just found a few of my notes from my last major crash:
“9/19/12 Called and talked to Chris again. Raid 1 enclosure won’t mount now. Error comes up “The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer”. Took the two drives out and tried them separately, but both drives had the same “not readable” error. Ran Disk Utiltiy’s Disk Repair and it had the errors “Invalid B-Tree node size” and couldn’t fix it. Bought Disk Warrior for $108.90.”
“Note also the further comments from OWC relating to my question of what is the configuration if there is a failed drive. This is fairly important as well. The RAID Mirror is rebuilt from the Primary Drive (plugged into the circuit board). So if the Primary drive fails you will need to swap them over before inserting the new drive. Having said that, if I get failed drive I will probably back-up to another disk (which I sort of do anyway) and rebuild the Raid entirely.”
Q: One of my drives failed and I replaced it. Do I need to connect it to the computer to rebuild the data?
A: No, the rebuild will occur without being connected to the computer as long as the power is turned on to the enclosure.Also according to my notes, my enclosure is officially:
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro “Quad”- 2 drive enclosure, Oxford 936 chipset.
—Anyway, I don’t know if any of this sheds more light on the issue or not, but now you know what I know.
Thanks for your time,
Dave -
[Dave Gage] “Go to Disk Utility and format each drive to Mac OS Extended (non-journaled in this case). Open the OWC Config app: Use raid 1 check box only (everything else should be left blank).”
Wait a minute. After you format the disk, you can’t see both drives?
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Wait a minute. After you format the disk, you can’t see both drives?”
It’s been a while since I did it and haven’t given it a thought since. I think you are correct, at this stage it may look like two drives, but I honestly don’t remember for sure. I can tell you’re getting at something, but I don’t know what it is yet.
dg
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Jeremy,
Completely off topic here, but you’ll notice that my photo is now at the top of the forum due to the amount of current postings. I had a conversation with Tim Wilson about this a while back because at the time I felt a bit strange that my photo was up there and someone like, you for instance, was not. I asked him why your photo wasn’t up there and he didn’t know. In theory, because of the sheer number of your posts, you should be up there and especially because you are one of the more helpful pros in the forums.
That’s all. I just mention it because I was reminded of it after seeing my photo at the top. I was originally under the impression that the photos were of the pros that gave support here, but I guess it’s more about the current number of posts. Strange that your pic never shows up there though.
dg
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[Dave Gage] “It’s been a while since I did it and haven’t given it a thought since. I think you are correct, at this stage it may look like two drives, but I honestly don’t remember for sure. I can tell you’re getting at something, but I don’t know what it is yet.”
What is bothering me is that you say that FCPX “hoses the drive”.
What you have explained to me is some sort of drive or more likely controller type of “failure”. If Disk Warrior is helping you, the catalogs are getting scrambled. This can be caused by a number of things, but it is usually related to some hardware type of weirdness, at least in my experience.
It could be the SATA card, the controller in the drive itself (if there is one), or something to do with how this weird software is controlling the hard drives.
OSX has the capability to build a Raid1 on its own.
I would want to restripe your drives with the OSX raid1 and see if it does any better.
if not, I’d swap the SATA card.
If that doesn’t work, I’d swap the enclosure.
In cost order, it goes:
Costs nothing but time and a backup.
Costs a new sata card that will be useful for as long as you use sata drives.
More expensive at which point you might think about another type of upgrade (Thunderbolt, etc)
Jeremy
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