Only one drive mounts -- TR4M eSata enclosure

[kirkbross]

I recently bought a SansDigital TR4M eSata enclosure and installed four drives and conntected it to one of the (NewerTechnology) ports on the back of my early 2008 Mac Pro. I am not using this enclosure for RAID, only to mount four SATA II drives.

The problem is only one drive mounts. I have reseated the drives and eSata cable and rebooted several times, but each time, only one drive (the bottom drive in the enclosure) shows up on my desktop. In the product features it says "Access to 4 Hard Drives while using only one cable" so I'm assuming it should be able to mount four drives via the single eSata cable.

Note: With the case open and my fingers resting on the top drive, it doesn't "feel" like it's getting power, so I'm wondering if only one drive is mounting because the rest aren't getting power!

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[PenguinMac]

You can only mount one drive on an eSata port unless you have a port multiplier eSata port. For that you'd need a special port multiplier card that offers that feature. There's a NewerTech RAID card that let's you mount up to 10 drives, I believe. Without it, your drive enclosure has to use JBOD or RAID to present the total of your 4 drives as 1 drive to the Mac Pro.

 

[kirkbross]

You can only mount one drive on an eSata port unless you have a port multiplier eSata port. For that you'd need a special port multiplier card that offers that feature. There's a NewerTech RAID card that let's you mount up to 10 drives, I believe. Without it, your drive enclosure has to use JBOD or RAID to present the total of your 4 drives as 1 drive to the Mac Pro.

Thanks! The enclosure came with a port multiplier card... I just didn't use it because I thought I might run into (Mac) driver issues. I'll install it and see what happens.

 

[kirkbross]

Well I installed the port multiplier card and I assume it'll work. BUT... now I have a new problem. None of the four drives seems to be getting power. None of the LEDs light up when I power on the enclosure. Also, I cannot hear or feel the drives spinning at all.

I'm exchanging emails with a SansDigital support person now... he's telling me the HDD lights only light up when there is a connection. That may be true, but the drives sound and feel OFF. One of the drives is a 10k RPM Raptor and it has a pretty good rumble when it powers on, so I suspect a problem with the power supply.