New OWC dual drive enclosure acting up; what's going on?!...

[Bengt77]

Hi all,

I bought an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual-Drive RAID triple interface enclosure a while ago. Today I received the two 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives I also ordered. I installed them in the OWC enclosure, exactly as the manual showed me to do. Then, when I had everything in place, I put all the screws back in, and attached the drive (I'll call the enclosure plus the two hard disks 'drive' from now on) to my 24" iMac, using the FW800 cable.

Then, when I powered up the drive, all I heard were loud clicking noises. Not just drives spinning up (I know how that sounds), but really loud clicking. Weird. I opened Disk Utility, and after a while two drives showed up. I erased the first without any problems. Then, when I wanted to erase the second, Disk Utility gave an error and the drive disconnected itself. Then, of course, I got a warning that the drive wasn't put away properly and that data loss might have occurred.

Not being sure if I had the RAID jumpers set up properly, I googled for the correct settings, but couldn't find any helpful pictures. Now I'm not sure what to do. The enclosure was set up to do RAID SPAN by default, but I want to have the two drives mounted as, well, two separate drives: JBOD. OWC glances over RAID jumper settings in the manual, but only shows the RAID0 and RAID SPAN settings. No JBOD settings to be found, even though the manual explicitly says the enclosure can be set up that way.

Does anybody know what's going on with my drive? Can anybody help me find the solution? Does anybody have any pictures of the correct JBOD jumper settings for my enclosure? It uses an Oxford 924 chipset, if that helps. The manual OWC offers as a download on the product page is the one that's included in the package, so no help there. I find this highly frustrating, really.

Any help is highly appreciated; thanks in advance.

 

[rmb7984]

I don't really know anything about the jumper settings for a RAID setup, but I have to ask: can you test the drives individually? Do you have a single enclosure you can place each drive in to make sure they are not faulty. The clicking sound you described makes me think there may be a mechanical fault with one of the drives. But that's really all the help I can be!

 

[Bengt77]

I don't really know anything about the jumper settings for a RAID setup, but I have to ask: can you test the drives individually? Do you have a single enclosure you can place each drive in to make sure they are not faulty. The clicking sound you described makes me think there may be a mechanical fault with one of the drives. But that's really all the help I can be!

Haven't tried that yet. Will do so right now. Bummer if one of the drives is faulty, but at least I'll have found the problem. I will post back when I'm done. Thanks!

 

[danny_w]

You're right, the manual is not very clear at all concerning the jumper setting. I just downloaded the manual and it says to remove the jumper for "2 drives independent operation" which I assume is JBOD mode. Does the board have only one jumper? The manual states:

Remove the jumper for 2 drives independent operation.
Move the jumper to the LEFT for STRIPE (RAID-0).
Leave it as is, on the right jumper to SPAN your 2 hard drives.
The above bottom picture is in the SPAN position..

 

[Bengt77]

You're right, the manual is not very clear at all concerning the jumper setting. I just downloaded the manual and it says to remove the jumper for "2 drives independent operation" which I assume is JBOD mode. Does the board have only one jumper? The manual states:

So much for reading manuals thoroughly. Thank you! I completely missed that part. Just missed it, I guess.

However. A new problem arised. The drive isn't being recognized at all anymore. Could I have fried the controller chip by trying some jumper settings (both pin sets 'open', both pin sets 'closed') to see which worked? Man, would it be f*cking sh*t if that's the case. The enclosure is now just being recognized as an unknown FireWire device working at 800MB/s. It still mounted both drive points as 'Other World Computing' yesterday, even though only one drive actually worked. But today, neither of them are. The enclosure just sits there. When I have one of the hard drives installed, it clicks loudly (only with that one drive, so it might indeed be faulty), but nothing happens. That's it. With the other installed, nothing happens either. Really weird...

 

[oacory]

I had the same thing like this happen to me about 10 month ago. I put a hard drive in an enclosure and it worked for a few months then on day my just wouldn't recognize it. I tried like everything for a week with no avail and since I could not return it or anything, I just had to eat the money i spent and by a new hard drive and enclosure, this time I stuck with a premade harddrive/enclosure. Hope you don't need to just eat it because it was something they say you did.

 

[orpheus1120]

Bengt77, have you given OWC a call? Let them know your problem, and see what kinda advice they give.

I would not think that messing the jumper would fry the circuit. It's seems rather imaginable. Perhaps you have not installed the drives properly. If I'm doing it, I will remove the drives and start the installation all over again just so I know I'm not missing any steps.

Let me know what OWC says, as I have eyes on this enclosure for a long time and would appreciate any feedback you may have.

btw, how many jumpers are there? From the manual, it seems there is only one? How do you remove it then?

 

[yippy]

Um, loud clicking is a sign of drive failure. The behavior you just described could be completely explained by you having received a bum hard drive. If you can, test the drives somewhere else, I suspect one of them is dead.

If that is the case, you should be able to get the hard drive itself replaced for free as all hard drives (not OEM) have a minimum 3 year warranty.

 

[crazzyeddie]

I would test the drives individually, as the loud noises sound like a failed drive.

If they both check out, call OWC. They have great tech support.

 

[charlzz4jazz]

OWC drive problems?

OWC has excellent customer service. Wouldn't one call them first?

Hi all,

I bought an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual-Drive RAID triple interface enclosure a while ago. Today I received the two 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives I also ordered. I installed them in the OWC enclosure, exactly as the manual showed me to do. Then, when I had everything in place, I put all the screws back in, and attached the drive (I'll call the enclosure plus the two hard disks 'drive' from now on) to my 24" iMac, using the FW800 cable.

Then, when I powered up the drive, all I heard were loud clicking noises. Not just drives spinning up (I know how that sounds), but really loud clicking. Weird. I opened Disk Utility, and after a while two drives showed up. I erased the first without any problems. Then, when I wanted to erase the second, Disk Utility gave an error and the drive disconnected itself. Then, of course, I got a warning that the drive wasn't put away properly and that data loss might have occurred.

Not being sure if I had the RAID jumpers set up properly, I googled for the correct settings, but couldn't find any helpful pictures. Now I'm not sure what to do. The enclosure was set up to do RAID SPAN by default, but I want to have the two drives mounted as, well, two separate drives: JBOD. OWC glances over RAID jumper settings in the manual, but only shows the RAID0 and RAID SPAN settings. No JBOD settings to be found, even though the manual explicitly says the enclosure can be set up that way.

Does anybody know what's going on with my drive? Can anybody help me find the solution? Does anybody have any pictures of the correct JBOD jumper settings for my enclosure? It uses an Oxford 924 chipset, if that helps. The manual OWC offers as a download on the product page is the one that's included in the package, so no help there. I find this highly frustrating, really.

Any help is highly appreciated; thanks in advance.

 

[Cheffy Dave]

Um, loud clicking is a sign of drive failure. The behavior you just described could be completely explained by you having received a bum hard drive. If you can, test the drives somewhere else, I suspect one of them is dead.

If that is the case, you should be able to get the hard drive itself replaced for free as all hard drives (not OEM) have a minimum 3 year warranty.

agree, call OWC support. These people are excellent

 

[yippy]

I was saying to NOT call OWC and to call Seagate instead as one of those drives might be dead.

 

[Bengt77]

Thanks for the replies. I've been in contact with one of OWC's Tech Support Supervisors, and he's been very helpful indeed. As for the clicking hard drive, I'm not too worried about having it replaced. I actually looked for the drives with the best warranty. Seagate gives you five years, instead of the more usual three years. So I assume having it replaced shouldn't be a problem.

A real bummer, though. With one drive kit, receiving both a faulty enclosure, and one dead drive. Bad luck, I guess.

 

[Bengt77]

Bengt77, have you given OWC a call? Let them know your problem, and see what kinda advice they give.

I would not think that messing the jumper would fry the circuit. It's seems rather imaginable. Perhaps you have not installed the drives properly. If I'm doing it, I will remove the drives and start the installation all over again just so I know I'm not missing any steps.

Let me know what OWC says, as I have eyes on this enclosure for a long time and would appreciate any feedback you may have.

btw, how many jumpers are there? From the manual, it seems there is only one? How do you remove it then?

Changing jumpers is easy. In the manual they show only one, but they ship two with the enclosure. The build quality is excellent. I'm absolutely positive it's a really good kit, once you have it working. It's definitely good looking, too.

And indeed, correspondance with OWC has been very satisfactory. They respond very quickly to e-mails and are obviously willing to assist you with everything. The only negative thing is that you can't connect to the RMA Request page from outside the US. The page seemed not to be working for me. None of the links to the page worked, as a matter of fact. Until I tried connecting to it through an anonymous web proxy site. The service page loaded without problems, then. So beware of that.