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iMac + Booting from Little Big Disk Thunderbolt + Sleep Issue

psneddon

psneddon

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 8, 2008
40
10
Scotland
Hi,

I have a 27" iMac (2011) and a Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (The HDD version but I replaced the drives with 2 512GB M4 SSDs). I'm running Raid 0 since I mirror to the internal HDD each night plus I have Time Machine enabled to I'm not at all worried about the risk.

The only issue I have is that if I let my iMac sleep, when it resumes it will hang. I know this is probably caused by the fact that the Little Big Disk powers down when the iMac is sleeping and the delay in starting up causes the iMac to freeze. So for now I have disabled sleep.

The reason I'm asking here is because I have searched though loads of threads regarding booting from a Thunderbolt Little Big Disk and nobody seems to mention not being able to resume from sleep? So I just wondered if anyone else had the same setup?

Regards,
Paul
 
Yeroon

Yeroon

macrumors member
Jun 12, 2012
64
0
Did you have that problem too when there was still a HDD inside?

I have a LaCie 2big Thunderbolt (2x 3 TB HDD) and when the Mac goes to sleep the HDD turns off (unmounted automatically). When the Mac awakes, the 2big awakes too and gets mounted again. This works reasonably well, though sometimes the 2big suddenly awakes while the Mac is still sleeping.

I disabled PowerNap and that seems to help.
 
L

LaCieTech

macrumors member
Jul 18, 2012
80
1
psneddon said:
Hi,

I have a 27" iMac (2011) and a Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (The HDD version but I replaced the drives with 2 512GB M4 SSDs). I'm running Raid 0 since I mirror to the internal HDD each night plus I have Time Machine enabled to I'm not at all worried about the risk.

The only issue I have is that if I let my iMac sleep, when it resumes it will hang. I know this is probably caused by the fact that the Little Big Disk powers down when the iMac is sleeping and the delay in starting up causes the iMac to freeze. So for now I have disabled sleep.

The reason I'm asking here is because I have searched though loads of threads regarding booting from a Thunderbolt Little Big Disk and nobody seems to mention not being able to resume from sleep? So I just wondered if anyone else had the same setup?

Regards,
Paul
Click to expand...

Hi Paul,

If you bought a LBD HDD, the chipset and firmware are optimized for HDDs and not SSDs. Replacing the internal disks can have various effects like that and delay in connecting is not a surprising one. The board is expecting a spin-up time from the drives and since SSD's don't have one it may be causing the board to miss-identify to the computer and cause a crash.

Unfortunately the drive's warranty was voided when you replaced the mechanisms. Our closed enclosures are voided by opening them.

~mn, LaCie
 
psneddon

psneddon

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 8, 2008
40
10
Scotland
Hi,

Thanks for your input. Don't worry I bought the device specifically so I could take it apart and void my warranty, if something is going to fail it would most likely be the actual drives or power supply anyway :)

However good news. I noticed that the latest Crucial M4 firmware mentioned improved power up times and response. I upgraded the firmware and sleep now workings without a hitch, even with the Little Big Disk totally powering off when the iMac goes to sleep.

I am now very happy with my iMac / external SSD Raid 0 setup :) And just for good measure here are some benchmarks.



Paul
 

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hfg

hfg

macrumors 68040
Dec 1, 2006
3,621
312
Cedar Rapids, IA. USA
psneddon said:
Hi,

Thanks for your input. Don't worry I bought the device specifically so I could take it apart and void my warranty, if something is going to fail it would most likely be the actual drives or power supply anyway :)

However good news. I noticed that the latest Crucial M4 firmware mentioned improved power up times and response. I upgraded the firmware and sleep now workings without a hitch, even with the Little Big Disk totally powering off when the iMac goes to sleep.

I am now very happy with my iMac / external SSD Raid 0 setup :) And just for good measure here are some benchmarks.



Paul
Click to expand...

Hi Paul,

I have done the same "transplant" as you did on 2 LaCie "LittleBigDisk" enclosures and installed Crucial M4 SSDs in place of the hard disks. I am getting similar results as you with that test program and mine are working great as well. I have 512GB drives in one, and 256GB drives in the other and they are configured as RAID-0.

I have noticed that the test results posted here for actual oem LaCie LBD-SSD units do have a higher data transfer rate than I am seeing, so there may be something to the firmware issues mentioned above by "LaCieTech" several months ago. Both of mine do have SATA-III controller chips in them, but firmware changes could be involved. I would be interested if he could candidly expand on this topic ... ?


-howard
 

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Last edited:
psneddon

psneddon

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 8, 2008
40
10
Scotland
Hi Howard,

My understanding is that the HDD based units (Little Big Disks) split a controller across the 2 drives, so the maximum you can get out a single drive is limited to SATAII (one SATAIII channel), while the SSD based units have full SATAII on each channel (two SATAIII channels)? I may be wrong but this what how I've come to understand the difference between the SSD and HDD based LBD units.

Paul
 
psneddon

psneddon

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 8, 2008
40
10
Scotland
Yeroon,

To be honest, I never even powered on the device when it arrived with the 2 HDD disks, I ripped it apart straight away and put my 2 SSDs in. Although your account of the behaviour with power nap does make sense, I can't remember even seeing the option for Power Nap on my iMac, only on my MacBook air.

Either way, I think my issues were either due to the drive firmware, or a bug that was fixed in the last Mac OS X point release.

Regards,
Paul

Yeroon said:
Did you have that problem too when there was still a HDD inside?

I have a LaCie 2big Thunderbolt (2x 3 TB HDD) and when the Mac goes to sleep the HDD turns off (unmounted automatically). When the Mac awakes, the 2big awakes too and gets mounted again. This works reasonably well, though sometimes the 2big suddenly awakes while the Mac is still sleeping.

I disabled PowerNap and that seems to help.
Click to expand...
 
hfg

hfg

macrumors 68040
Dec 1, 2006
3,621
312
Cedar Rapids, IA. USA
Since these posts were from last Nov., some of these people may no longer be around. :)

I am curious Paul, did you unplug the obnoxious fan when you replaced the disks with SSDs? If so, have you encountered any thermal issues?

Mine are running without the fan and seem to be adequately cool, at least at the case.
 
W

WilliamG

macrumors G3
Mar 29, 2008
9,922
3,800
Seattle
hfg said:
Since these posts were from last Nov., some of these people may no longer be around. :)

I am curious Paul, did you unplug the obnoxious fan when you replaced the disks with SSDs? If so, have you encountered any thermal issues?

Mine are running without the fan and seem to be adequately cool, at least at the case.
Click to expand...

I think can answer that for you, given that 99.9% of 2.5" enclosures don't have a fan. With an SSD, you'll be just fine. Think about how hot these flash drives run in smaller laptops like MacBook Airs or other small laptops with hardly any airflow. I wouldn't worry.

Personally, I won't buy any hard drive enclosure with a fan, since they're all so darn noisy. I use several Western Digital Studio II drives (RAID enclosures) with two 3.5" spinning hard drives in each, and that doesn't have a fan either. Been using them for years and years now.

So, in short (after my long monologue!), don't worry about the fan. :)
 
psneddon

psneddon

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 8, 2008
40
10
Scotland
Yep, fan is disconnected, been running like that for about 6 months now. Its warm, but not hot.

Paul

hfg said:
Since these posts were from last Nov., some of these people may no longer be around. :)

I am curious Paul, did you unplug the obnoxious fan when you replaced the disks with SSDs? If so, have you encountered any thermal issues?

Mine are running without the fan and seem to be adequately cool, at least at the case.
Click to expand...
 
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