My plans never survive contact with reality.

[eyoungren]

Recently, I purchased two 3TB WD Green hard drives and an ICY DOCK. The ICY DOCK is eSATA and USB 2.0. I figured I'd attach it to my server and have a 6TB RAID.

I figured wrong.

Over the past week I have attempted to make this work. Long story short, the dock I bought is limited to a total of 2TB in RAID, just like my other dock. Only, with eSATA it will show only ONE drive. That's the same situation with my Thermaltake dock which I have since connected via USB to my Quad.

So, I moved the old 1TB WD Green I was using and another 1TB drive I had laying around into the ICY DOCK and attached them to my Mac Mini running OS X Sierra (that's another story) via USB. After futzing around I finally managed to get it usable. I have moved my Dropbox folder to the ICY DOCK RAID (2TB) and this means that my 'garage server' is now functioning with a 2TB drive for sharing and not the 320GB boot drive I was using.

The two 3TB WD Greens I bought? Well, that's a third story. I'm picking up a free G4 today from a reddit user in Phoenix. Those are going to go in there with a PCI SATA card. We will see how THAT plan works out.

Lastly, it means I have one space for another RAID on my main G3 server. Looking at another dock on eBay that is the same Fantom Drives manufacturer as my current one. We will see.



PS. I told you I'm into gaming!

 

[micahgartman]

You still use a Pro Keyboard? You're a mad man, sir!!!

What kind of RAID does the ICY DOCK use?

 

[eyoungren]

You still use a Pro Keyboard? You're a mad man, sir!!!

What kind of RAID does the ICY DOCK use?

I have four of those keyboards. One for my Quad, one for my 2.3 DC, one for my 2.7DP and one for my Mini.

I also had my boss buy one so I use it with a 2015 MBP at work. These keyboards have the best feel and utility to me than any other that I've used and I've been using a few since 1999 when I got started in the design business.

I'm also partial to the wired Mighty Mouse so I use those when I can.

The ICY DOCK is an MB662US-2S.

 

[Slix]

I have four of those keyboards. One for my Quad, one for my 2.3 DC, one for my 2.7DP and one for my Mini.

I also had my boss buy one so I use it with a 2015 MBP at work. These keyboards have the best feel and utility to me than any other that I've used and I've been using a few since 1999 when I got started in the design business.

I'm also partial to the wired Mighty Mouse so I use those when I can.

The ICY DOCK is an MB662US-2S.

A man of culture, I see.

While I think the aluminum keyboard might be my favorite for a usability standpoint, the Pro Keyboard does feel quite nice to use. My aunt and uncle got one with their iMac G3 in 2001 and still uses it after 3 upgrades, currently on a Mac Mini! I also like the Mighty Mouse a lot too. The squeezy sides feature is so handy.

 

[eyoungren]

A man of culture, I see.

While I think the aluminum keyboard might be my favorite for a usability standpoint, the Pro Keyboard does feel quite nice to use. My aunt and uncle got one with their iMac G3 in 2001 and still uses it after 3 upgrades, currently on a Mac Mini! I also like the Mighty Mouse a lot too. The squeezy sides feature is so handy.

I tried the aluminum keyboards for a while. They are okay, just not what I'm used to. I also used one of those DNA collectors at work for years (the one with the open plastic sides).

I like the Magic Mighty Mouse because of the roller ball. Makes it easy to navigate up and down in Finder windows and web pages.

 

[AphoticD]

The squeezy sides feature is so handy.

I seem to click the sides by mistake so I always turn that feature off!

 

[eyoungren]

I seem to click the sides by mistake so I always turn that feature off!

It's a really useful feature when you're using the Lasso tool in Photoshop, but have to pick the mouse up and move it without losing your track or dropping the selection.

 

[1042686]

I’m a fan of the extended aluminum tick tack keyboard & Magic Mouse+gestures.

I do like using machine/era correct keyboards though, so have & use many maintained pro keyboards which are nice but they do require maintenance & key cap lubrication for me to enjoy them which I haven’t had to do with the alu keyboard - just an occasional wipe with magic eraser and voila.

I guess it is more me vacillating between bigger & shorter keycap travel. Some days I just prefer the tactile change up & have quite a few kb to achieve this but my overall daily driver is the wired extended aluminum keyboard.

 

[eyoungren]

I’m a fan of the extended aluminum tick tack keyboard & Magic Mouse+gestures.

I do like using machine/era correct keyboards though, so have & use many maintained pro keyboards which are nice but they do require maintenance & key cap lubrication for me to enjoy them which I haven’t had to do with the alu keyboard - just an occasional wipe with magic eraser and voila.

I guess it is more me vacillating between bigger & shorter keycap travel. Some days I just prefer the tactile change up & have quite a few kb to achieve this but my overall daily driver is the wired extended aluminum keyboard.

I have a machine/era specific keyboard for the iMac G3 and PowerMac G4. I use it as a backup keyboard but this keyboard was the main reason that I and my production manager petitioned the boss in 2000 for full size MacAlly keyboards. Those little chicklet arrow keys are a non-starter.

My main problem with the aluminum keyboard is that they are light and I tend to have a heavy hand. That results in the keyboard having some travel and not staying in one spot some times. I also have to clip my nails more frequently.

 

[1042686]

I’m a pretty light fingered typer anymore so movement isn’t so much an issue for me fortunately. I totally get it though - you like what you like. It’s like someone telling me that Ibanez basses are great, but deep down 30 years later, A Fender Precision bass w/ C width neck is my jam & not much is ever going to change that.

 

[Bug-Creator]

I like the Magic Mouse because of the roller ball.

That would the Mighty Mouse.

 

[eyoungren]

That would the Mighty Mouse.

Yeah, I always get them mixed up!

 

[1042686]

Speaking of the Mighty Mouse, I had the chance to pull out & use a wired one while messing around with one of my MDDs last night. Forgot how good feeling that little scrolling rollerball nubbin thing is.

was very nice. I think I’ll hunt down a couple of their wireless counterparts. Like keyboards, it would be nice simply for the tactile change up.
[automerge]1582815108[/automerge]

Yeah, I always get them mixed up!

I can’t keep my macs & Macintosh paraphernalia straight if I tried anymore. Are we getting old & this is the youth reminding us of that?

Never thought I’d get there until well... I got there lol

 

[bunnspecial]

I went non-Apple on my Mac Pro at work-I have a Unicomp Spacesaver M.

My Mac Pro at home has an Apple Extended via a Griffin USB-ADB adapter.

Bang on these all you want to with as heavy of a hand as you want-you're not going to break them

 

[Amethyst1]

You still use a Pro Keyboard? You're a mad man, sir!!!

I'm still using a white Pro Keyboard (the one that came with iMac G4s I believe) that I picked up new-in-box a couple of years ago. Mine has a delightfully exotic Japanese layout to boot, which makes me like it even more.

 

[Amethyst1]

I also used one of those DNA collectors at work for years (the one with the open plastic sides).

LOL, that's so true. Still, they're quite nice to type on.

I like the Magic Mighty Mouse because of the roller ball.

...until that thingy gets clogged up with dust and dirt and stops working, requiring disassembly and cleaning.
[automerge]1582896874[/automerge]

Over the past week I have attempted to make this work. Long story short, the dock I bought is limited to a total of 2TB in RAID, just like my other dock. Only, with eSATA it will show only ONE drive.

Did you try setting the dock to JBOD (non-RAID), connecting it via USB so that the two individual drives show up with (hopefully) their full capacity, and then RAIDing them in Disk Utility? The reason that it only shows one drive via eSATA is that your SATA card needs to support the "port multiplication" feature which allows multiple drives to be connected via a single port. Looks like your card doesn't.

 

[eyoungren]

Did you try setting the dock to JBOD (non-RAID), connecting it via USB so that the two individual drives show up with (hopefully) their full capacity, and then RAIDing them in Disk Utility? The reason that it only shows one drive via eSATA is that your SATA card needs to support the "port multiplication" feature which allows multiple drives to be connected via a single port. Looks like your card doesn't.

I did try that. And both of the 3TB drives I was using were seen as 2TB drives and not 3TB. That's obviously 1GB short. This dock is now attached to my Mini running Sierra but it was the same when attached to my G3. Through trial and error I finally figured out that the dock will accept two 1TB drives to make one 2TB RAID. This makes sense as my other dock (Fantom Drives) is also a 2TB RAID (with 2x 1TB drives) max.

It's a firmware limitation in the dock controller. Once I used two 1TB drives everything worked as expected. Which is why my 3TB Green drives then shifted to my G4.

Now, as to the PCI SATA card in my G3 server and port multiplication. Here's the thing. It's a Sonnet and via eSATA:

• Fantom Drives 2TB RAID is seen correctly (2x 1TB drives)
• ICY DOCK 2TB RAID is NOT seen correctly (only 1 drive is seen)
• Thermaltake 2 slot external dock is NOT seen correctly (only 1 drive in one slot is seen)

The documentation on the ICY DOCK states that only one drive will be seen via eSATA so this is correct and means you are correct.

It has to mean then that the Fantom Drives dock has something else involved. Both the Fantom Drives and the ICY DOCK create the RAID via their firmware. But the Fantom Drives dock will show correctly and the ICY DOCK will not when using eSATA.