Largest bus powered hard disk

[nutmac]

Few years ago, Seagate made a bus powered 3.5" USB-C external disk named Innov8, which was available in 8 TB size.

Since then, 3.5" bus powered hard disks have all disappeared. From what I can tell, the largest bus powered external disk is 2.5", limited to 5 TB.

Among the enclosure, OWC makes a dual bay RAID 2.5" called Mercury Elite Pro Dual, which could in theory support up to 10 TB. But the website mentions support for only up to 4 TB (or two 2 TB), which isn't any better.

So is 5 TB the largest bus powered external disk?

 

[Fishrrman]

My opinion only.

For a disk of any size that you're going to rely on, DON'T use bus power.
Get a drive with its own power supply and use that.

As you've found, there are very few (if any) 3.5" drives that can spin up and mount under the Mac's bus power. The reason is that the Mac doesn't supply enough power to get a drive of this size running and keep it running.

I would not depend on bus power for a RAID drive at all.
And remember -- RAID -IS NOT- a backup!

 

[TonyK]

I've got a Seagate 4TB USB3 bus powered drive. Actually 2 and they have worked great for a number of years. CostCo sold them and continues to sell them.

But as Fishrrman said, wouldn't trust bus powered for a raid system. Only for individual drives. Even then mine are on a UPS system for extra protection.