MacAlly hard drive enclosure doesn't work

[michwj]

replacement

Tech Support of Macally , Michael Huang, contacted me for the same issue.
A replacement power adapter has been used 12V 3A, so far so good.
No problem for spin up and wake up from sleep mode.

12V2A adapter can function normally. Although it caused to fail to spin up.

contact Macally for new adapter if the power issue still exists.

I've now had my franken powersupply running for almost a week with not a single failure to spin up.
2 amps seems to be too little for some hard drives to reliably spin up. 4 amps is clearly enough. Specs on the drive say 3A.

MacAlly seems to know their power supply isn't strong enough for some drives.

Response from their tech support,

Some large capacity hard drives may consume more power than what enclosure power adapter can provide, which may cause such issue as you indicated.

Sincerely,

Michael Huang, Tech Support
Macally USA​

I'm still amazed that a company can sell a product that they know may not work, and doesn't offer to fix it or replace it, nor does it ever warn the prospective customer that it may not work.

 

[dmelgar]

Tech Support of Macally , Michael Huang, contacted me for the same issue.
A replacement power adapter has been used 12V 3A, so far so good.
No problem for spin up and wake up from sleep mode.

12V2A adapter can function normally. Although it caused to fail to spin up.

contact Macally for new adapter if the power issue still exists.

Yes, I received a 12V 3A adapter from Macally after some complaining.

However, I still can't quite figure out what the cause it.

When I used the original 2A power supply, it would fail after just a few hours. Very consistent.

When I switched to my franken 4A power supply, it was much better, but it still fails sometimes. I think I counted 3 times in a month. Certainly much better than a few hours.

Hard to tell with the 3A power supply, but it seemed to fail somewhere in between. Every 2-3 days it would seem to fail.

I don't understand why its failing at all. I also have a 400GB drive with similar power requirements in a different case with a 2A adapter and it hasn't failed once in the months since I first reported this problem. Maybe there is something odd with my drive where it takes exceptional power to spin it up. Or maybe there's something else wrong with the enclosure. I don't know.

In any case, the most reliable performance I've had has been with my 4A power supply. So far using the MacAlly supplied 3A power supply for a couple of weeks, I switched back to my 4A power supply. As reported above, it still fails once in a great while, but still significantly less than it does even with the new 3A adapter from Macally.

 

[schweinsteiger]

two Macally enclosures are failing for me too

I have two similar Macally enclosures, both G-S350SUA, one with FireWire400 the other with FireWire 400 and 800. One has a 1TB Seagate in it, the other a 1.5TB WD Green HD.

I just use them for back-up, so they're off most of the time. Yesterday both wouldn't mount at the same time. I thought something was wrong with the FireWire in my new MacPro, but the 400 model wouldn't mount on my G4 PowerBook, and other FireWire enclosure would mount on my MacPro. I searched a bit and found this thread indicating that it is a known problem with Macally enclosures ...

I called them this morning and they will be sending new 3A Power Supplies.

This morning one of them mounted. The other still not ... I can turn it off, unplug, turn it back on it, nothing ... Weird.