Interesting changes in hard drive options these days

[mikehalloran]

Me, I'm waiting for 4T SSDs to come down in price. Since a 2010 iMac is limited to SATA II, it's not really an issue yet. Having two SSDs, internal 2T and an external 2T over eSATA is just fine for now*.

Next year, I hope to be in the market for newer! faster! better!

*2011 iMacs & 2010 27" iMacs have three SATA busses but Apple used only two. OWC can mod those two years to eSATA using that third buss.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/turnkey ... 1496937597

[mhschmieder]

Michael, I didn't mean to imply that the USB-c protocol itself is a step back -- I thought I made that clear. Just that currently available external drives (not external enclosures for internal drives or SSD) are currently very low speed.

[Michael Canavan]

Michael, I didn't mean to imply that the USB-c protocol itself is a step back -- I thought I made that clear. Just that currently available external drives (not external enclosures for internal drives or SSD) are currently very low speed.

Yeah that makes more sense for sure, I know the Lacie TB and USB3 external enclosure I have is slooow, USB 3 can hit 400mhz and Thunderbolt should be able to no problem, but the drive reads at 330...

[mhschmieder]

I'm still tearing my hair out trying to figure out my best path forward, and contacted MacSales support staff via their website tonight (they're off-line at the moment) to verify that the Helios 3 can host the Accelsior_E2, but I'm not convinced real world speed will be any greater than my 4 TB 6 Gb/s Deskstar SATA drive hosted by Kingwin TrueDock.

[daniel.sneed]

[...]Here's a good article on the various types of TB and USB.
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/usb-type-c- ... -them-all/

Thanks for posting, Mike. Nowadays, usb types have turned to be somewhat confusing to me.

[buzzsmith]

Following and a comment...I have 2 Iomega externals and an OWC external (all FireWire) and they all are susceptible to randomly powering down for some reason. Not sleep, as there is no option to "wake" them.

The power lights remain lit, but the drives stop spinning.

When this happens, it really slows down the Mac. Workaround is a (longer than usual) shutdown and turn off the drives and restart.

Buzzy


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[mikehalloran]

Following and a comment...I have 2 Iomega externals and an OWC external (all FireWire) and they all are susceptible to randomly powering down for some reason. Not sleep, as there is no option to "wake" them.

The power lights remain lit, but the drives stop spinning.

When this happens, it really slows down the Mac. Workaround is a (longer than usual) shutdown and turn off the drives and restart.

Buzzy


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Yep.

I spent a long time and too much money trying to find FW housings that didn't do that with my iMac. Nada. Fortunately, all supported USB, too.

I finally took the clue from the fact that Intel Macs cannot Boot from FireWire (as Apple calls it, "unreliable" ) but can from USB.

My 828mkII is the only FW device I use anymore and I do not let my Mac go to sleep when I'm using it.

[mhschmieder]

OWC tech support got back to me with the answer that the Helios 3 supports all of the same devices as the Helios 2, due to the already existing conditions on size limitations of the PCIe cards that are supported. Here's the chart that she linked:

https://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/ ... atibility/

As for what Mike said about FW, that's good to hear, as I was thinking of maybe switching back from USB2 to FW400 for my RME Fireface UFX once the OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock is released:

https://eshop.macsales.com/preorder/owc ... lt-3-dock/

I can hardly wait for this, as the powered USB hub that I bought has dodgy connectors that are impossible to fully secure and therefore are ultra-sensitive and easily lose their connection during real-world use. It is nice, however, to have individual power switches for all seven receptacles.

[dix]

Following and a comment...I have 2 Iomega externals and an OWC external (all FireWire) and they all are susceptible to randomly powering down for some reason. Not sleep, as there is no option to "wake" them.

The power lights remain lit, but the drives stop spinning.

When this happens, it really slows down the Mac. Workaround is a (longer than usual) shutdown and turn off the drives and restart.

This happens to me too. Have you tried just cycling the external FW drives? That's all I need to do to get the drives back. No restart needed.

[buzzsmith]

Following and a comment...I have 2 Iomega externals and an OWC external (all FireWire) and they all are susceptible to randomly powering down for some reason. Not sleep, as there is no option to "wake" them.

The power lights remain lit, but the drives stop spinning.

When this happens, it really slows down the Mac. Workaround is a (longer than usual) shutdown and turn off the drives and restart.

This happens to me too. Have you tried just cycling the external FW drives? That's all I need to do to get the drives back. No restart needed.

Dix, if you mean powering off the drive with the Mac still on, I get the system alert message that says...

"The disk was not ejected properly. If possible, always eject a disk before unplugging it or turning it off.

The next time you connect the disk, Mac OS X will attempt to repair any damage to the information on the disk."

In my case, even when the drive stops spinning, the drive icon is still on my desktop but the drive is not usable.

Thanks!

Buzzy

[dix]

In my case, even when the drive stops spinning, the drive icon is still on my desktop but the drive is not usable.

Ah. My icons all disappear. Weirdly, I'll sometimes get the illegal-ejection warning, but like hours later! I guess you tried ejecting the icons. Can you unmount with Disk Utility?

[buzzsmith]

Yep.

I spent a long time and too much money trying to find FW housings that didn't do that with my iMac. Nada. Fortunately, all supported USB, too.

I finally took the clue from the fact that Intel Macs cannot Boot from FireWire (as Apple calls it, "unreliable" ) but can from USB.

My 828mkII is the only FW device I use anymore and I do not let my Mac go to sleep when I'm using it.

As Mike suggested (why does it take me a dozen years to realize something so simple?!!), I connected one of the external sleepy drives to the Mac today via USB 2.0.

6 hours later, still spinning.

Gracias, Mike!

Buzzy

(Now I'll have to re-cable my TM drive to USB as it also likes to cycle down.)



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[buzzsmith]

In my case, even when the drive stops spinning, the drive icon is still on my desktop but the drive is not usable.

Ah. My icons all disappear. Weirdly, I'll sometimes get the illegal-ejection warning, but like hours later! I guess you tried ejecting the icons. Can you unmount with Disk Utility?

Dix, I can't "eject". I get some message about it can't. Pretty sure that I can't force eject either.

Haven't tried Disk Utility but, if it happens again to the one remaining drive still on FW, I'll see.

Switching to USB seems to be working fine. See post above to Mike.

Appreciate it!

Buzzy


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[mhschmieder]

I have studied the specs forever and don't understand them at all.

How can a device support 6 GB/s then right after that say maximum 85 MB/s?

Is one the burst speed and the other the maximum sustained speed?

A lot of lacking specs on many product pages too, leaving me confused.

I am hesitant to buy the OWC Mercury Helios for my Mercury Accelsior E2 SSD PCIe 48 GB card, if it is actually slower than my internal SATA drives hosted by the cheap Kingwin TrueDock.

The specs are looking that way, so maybe I should just sell the PCIe card and stick with a couple of internal SATA's from my MacPro, hosted in TrueDock's via USB3.

[mhschmieder]

Ah, this description makes clear that there's a lot of shorthand terminology going around, and that the two specs are completely unrelated:

"The Accelsior E2 utilizes the PCIe slot in Mac Pros and PC towers, the fastest data interface available, to deliver up to 820MB/s of blistering performance. That's nearly 3x faster than an SSD equipped Mac Pro 3Gb/s drive bay, and well beyond 6Gb/s drive speeds."

Even so, I think the TrueDock (under $25) is rated at higher transfer speed than the Mercury PCIe enclosure, but I'll have to read their specs one more time to see if I can find the right ones.