Spontaneous external hard drive un-mounting

stevenew · Post by **stevenew** » Sun Dec 11, 2011 10:17 am

I have finally bought a Firewire 800 hub to expand my single FW800 port on my 2009 iMac, so I can run my Traveler (which is chained to my 828) and a FW800 external hard drive. I have a Seagate FreeAgent FW800 which I have been using just for archiving, I switch it on copy stuff on to it and switch it off, it never gets left on all the time. I have now cleared this drive with a view to using it for VI samples.

But I now find that when it is left on and goes to sleep and I switch on the Traveler the Seagate unmounts and I get the drive disconnect error. I then have to unplug/plugin the Seagate to get it to mount again.

I then read on the Apple and Seagate boards that spontaneous unmounting is a common problem with Seagate externals even USB ones because of Seagates built in sleep that is independent of the OS X drive sleep. So I downloaded the Seagate app that disables the built in sleep, and providing the OS X drive sleep is off it seems OK.

Strangely I have a USB Seagate FreeAgent that I use for Time Machine and it does not seem to have this issue.

However I now wonder if I should forget using the Seagate FreeAgent and get another external hard drive, maybe Lacie?

Anyone any experience of this problem or thoughts on good FW800 drives available in the UK.

Steve

daniel.sneed · Post by **daniel.sneed** » Sun Dec 11, 2011 2:44 pm

Lately I've had a few problems with external drives. Drives were slow mounting, or not mounting at all, unexpected disconnections.
All of them were related to faulty enclosures, not the drives.

buzzsmith · Post by **buzzsmith** » Sun Dec 11, 2011 3:06 pm

I have two new external FireWire 800 1TB iomegas that like to take naps, too. Also independent of the Mac OSX preferences. Most of the time the disk icon is visible on the desktop, but the drive is definitely spun down and not addressable or eject-able. I have to power it (them) off and then back on for a remount.

I'll have to see if there's a spontaneous unmounting issue or fix somewhere.

(I believe I've also tried the USB connections with the same unwanted result.)

Thanks...

Buzzy

kgdrum · Post by **kgdrum** » Sun Dec 11, 2011 3:09 pm

the cheap power supply wall wart that is mated with these enclosures is the cause of many of the issues I have experienced.

stevenew · Post by **stevenew** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:12 am

Hi,

I experimented with this issue yesterday with the following results:

As I said in my original post, the Seagate FW800 has a sleep setting independent of the the OS X hard drive settings which I have been able to disable with the Seagate software.

If the OS X drive sleep setting is on and the Seagate is spun down and another firewire device (Traveler or another FW drive) is switched on or off the Seagate FW800 drive spontaneously unmounts and the only way to mount it is to either disconnect/connect the firewire cable or power supply.

If the OS X drive sleep is off and thus the drive is always spinning switching on another firewire device causes no issues.

The Seagate software that was able to disable the internal sleep of the FW800 drive has no effect on disabling the internal sleep of my Seagate FreeAgent USB only drive that I use for TM.

I have another small Seagate USB drive that is bus powered and seems to not have the spontaneous issue.

I have read on the Apple forums similar issues with certain Lacie, iomega, WD drives which it seems also have independent sleep systems.

So it seems to me that a combination of independent sleep systems enclosure/chipset and power supplies do indeed cause this issue, also some people report having no issues before a certain release of Snow Leopard but all seem to have issues in 10.6.7 and 10.6.8 and still in Lion.

Steve

buzzsmith · Post by **buzzsmith** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 9:33 am

I think I'm in the Snow Leopard category. I don't recall this issue with Leopard.

Buzzy

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

daniel.sneed · Post by **daniel.sneed** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 12:57 pm

stevenew wrote:[...]some people report having no issues before a certain release of Snow Leopard but all seem to have issues in 10.6.7 and 10.6.8 and still in Lion.

Same here.
My most erratic drive with 10.6.8 works like a charm with 10.4.11.
Go figure!
BTW, changing the enclosure solved the case.

stevenew · Post by **stevenew** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 2:43 pm

Daniel,

What enclosure did you change to?

If I can figure a way to open the Seagate (it has no visible screws), I may try a new enclosure.

Steve

daniel.sneed · Post by **daniel.sneed** » Tue Dec 13, 2011 6:46 am

Steve, the original FW-usb enclosure was a Storeva. So was the second, and cheaper, one.
This is certainly a tricky behavior. The first enclosure has been returned under warranty twice, to not avail.
The second one is just somewhat slow-mounting at Mac boot. Around 30 seconds, while the first was much faster, but... extremely erratic.
That's around 50€ lost, but up and running now.

stevenew · Post by **stevenew** » Tue Dec 13, 2011 7:24 am

Daniel,

Interesting, not seen those enclosure here in the UK, in fact FW800 enclosures seem real hard to find here, this is the best one I could find http://www.atlastsolutions.com/professi ... re-sk3500/ very expensive but does have eSATA & USB 3 as well.

I have now found a video on youtube on how to get the drive out of the Seagate enclosure:-)

Thanks

Steve

daniel.sneed · Post by **daniel.sneed** » Tue Dec 13, 2011 7:45 am

Here they are
http://www.macway.com/fr/product/21258/ ... sb-20.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.macway.com/fr/product/22423/ ... esata.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Dan Walsh · Post by **Dan Walsh** » Tue Dec 13, 2011 8:41 am

daniel.sneed wrote:Here they are
http://www.macway.com/fr/product/21258/ ... sb-20.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Just a fair warning--this enclosure looks exactly like the one they sell at carbon Computing here in Waterloo, ON. I'm not sure which drives are enclosed in them, but they are sold under the name of Elephant Drives.

I've had nothing but probs with these for the last year. I owned 3 of them and 2 of them had to go back to have some electronics repaired within the enclosure and all 3 of them wound up with faulty power supplys. I wasn't the only one with probs. In fact, a couple of weeks back, I finally snapped and took the 3rd one in for the last time, and there were 2 other customers complaining of probs also.

Sometimes my drive wouldn't mount, or some times I couldn't eject them. These are the only drives I've ever had probs with.

This has just been my experience, but really those enclosures in the link look EXACTLY like the ones I had.

daniel.sneed · Post by **daniel.sneed** » Tue Dec 13, 2011 11:12 am

Thanks for sharing, Dan. Maybe same manufacturer, in fact.
In my own case, I'm quite sure there are no drive fault, only enclosure and/or supply faults.

kgdrum · Post by **kgdrum** » Tue Dec 13, 2011 11:21 am

+1
As I said much earlier in the thread,in my experience most of the enclosure problems have been caused by bad power supply's / wall warts that come w/ these enclosures.
If you have more than 1 and you have one that is OK and 1 that is not,try swapping the wall wart.

Dan Walsh · Post by **Dan Walsh** » Tue Dec 13, 2011 11:22 am

daniel.sneed wrote:Thanks for sharing, Dan. Maybe same manufacturer, in fact.
In my own case, I'm quite sure there are no drive fault, only enclosure and/or supply faults.

Yeah me too. The actual drives in each of my enclosures was good. It was just the enclosure themselves and the power supplies that were suspect. It was too bad for me, because the drives were a nice price. However---I guess I got what I paid for

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