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OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual-Bay not being recognized

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uRabbit

macrumors member
Original poster
May 13, 2011
90
0
I'm on the latest build of Lion. Using FW 800.
Just got my 2-bay enclosure yesterday, installed the drives, and it would only recognize one of them. So, I check the connections and all is good. It's pretty hard to mess up a HDD installation, especially in an enclosure. Power cable is good. The FW 800 cable is good. Or, at least, a working USB 2.0 cable is not making the drives work.

So I swap positions of the drives so that they are using the other connection that they weren't before. Nothing. Now neither of them are being recognized at all. Last night, I formatted the one drive and even made a TM backup... Urgh!

Anyone know what this could be? I am going to try their live chat support this evening when I get off work.
 
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uRabbit

macrumors member
Original poster
May 13, 2011
90
0
reputationZed said:
IIRC there is a jumper on the enclosures PC board for setting the drives up as RAID0, RAID1, or JBOD. Its possible the jumper may not be in the correct postion, a long shot I'll admit but worth checking out.
Click to expand...

While the manual does show instructions for RAID settings for my chipset (Oxford 934), the jumpers that it show are not in my enclosure.

edit: In case this matters - the HDD's are spinning up when powered on. Also, the fan in the enclosure is not spinning. However, I doubt either of those are related to this bigger issue...
edit2: In System Profiler, under FireWire Bus, an 'unknown device' is being recognized.
 
Last edited:
S

StE823

macrumors member
Mar 31, 2009
73
24
Toronto
i have the same enclosure and could not find the jumper too... how can i use raid1 with this enclosure.. it said it support raid0,1 and span on the box!
 
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uRabbit

macrumors member
Original poster
May 13, 2011
90
0
I spoke with Tech Support this evening. Turns out it's a bad unit. He said what it was, specifically, but I cannot remember. It was whatever communicates the drives with the enclosure.

I asked him about the RAID jumpers, and he mentioned that this model does not have it, hence why it was on sale. They are in the process of moving to the models with the jumpers. However, he says it is a RAID enclosure, and that it is compatible with my iMac.

We are doing an order switch. They have sent out a new one and I will be sending out mine tomorrow. They put a temporary hold on my account for the amount of the enclosure. It will be reversed once they receive it.

Hopefully this next unit does not go bonkers on me...
 
xraydoc

xraydoc

Contributor
Oct 9, 2005
10,767
5,216
192.168.1.1
While sometimes items are DOA or mistakes are made, I've found OWC to be a very honorable company and I've been using them for at least 10 years without a single complaint that wasn't rectified.

Just to share, a couple of months ago I ordered a product which went on backorder immediately before mine shipped. When the unit finally shipped (about a 1 week delay), they did not charge me for shipping - without me even asking.

I've got thousands of dollars worth of their products (RAM, drive enclosures, HD and SSD mechanisms purchased from them, cables, etc.) and I'm very satisfied. Even if the same or similar item is a little cheaper on NewEgg, I'll still use OWC.
 
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uRabbit

macrumors member
Original poster
May 13, 2011
90
0
xraydoc,

I have to say that I am satisfied with OWC as well. I have an OWC external that I've had for four years. While the Seagate drive inside is great, so is the enclosure. They sure know how to make quality products.

My only complaint is that they need to update their designs a wee bit. Having an external enclosure (the 2-bay one) that looks like a mini Mac Pro next to my new iMac is a little strange. But at least it matches one of the Apple themes. ;)
 
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uRabbit

macrumors member
Original poster
May 13, 2011
90
0
Rather than posting a new topic, i hope to be able to get some help thru this thread, since it is somewhat related.

Got the replacement today and it seems to be working.

However, is there a way to not use RAID, or at least get both drives to show up? I have a 1 TB and a 2 TB in there, so - as I understand it - it is showing 2x the smallest drive, being 2 TB. Can I just show both? Can I use both?

Also, with Time Machine; after the backup, will I still be able to use that drive for other storage?
 
D

dubaimac

macrumors regular
Jun 26, 2009
146
53
I have just received one as well, if it does not have the jumpers then it must be configured using the raid configuration, only works up to snow leopard, or in windows, you can specify 0,1 and individual volumes, I had to speak with them to find this out. +++++++ for OWC service, very happy.
 
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EEXOOO

macrumors regular
Aug 1, 2009
133
0
uRabbit said:
Rather than posting a new topic, i hope to be able to get some help thru this thread, since it is somewhat related.

Got the replacement today and it seems to be working.

However, is there a way to not use RAID, or at least get both drives to show up? I have a 1 TB and a 2 TB in there, so - as I understand it - it is showing 2x the smallest drive, being 2 TB. Can I just show both? Can I use both?

Also, with Time Machine; after the backup, will I still be able to use that drive for other storage?
Click to expand...

If you're using the Oxford 934 Chipset then you MUST use RAID. This specific chipset does not support JBOD or Individual disks.
 
U

uRabbit

macrumors member
Original poster
May 13, 2011
90
0
EEXOOO said:
If you're using the Oxford 934 Chipset then you MUST use RAID. This specific chipset does not support JBOD or Individual disks.
Click to expand...

Alrighty then. Can I still use 3 TB of space that I have, or just the 2 TB that it shows? And can I see the individual volumes?

Sorry for the ignorance.
 
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