RAID array not showing up on Mac.

[gwelmarten]

Hi
So, I just bought a Sharkoon 2 Bay Raid Box with 2 Seagate 3TB HDD's.
And my iMac just can not see it!
I put my two drives in, closed the doors and plugged it into the power. When I switched it on, the lights just lit up to say it is idling. I selected the mode I wanted (mirroring) and pressed the "Mode" button, and nothing happened.
I plugged it into both Mac and PC, and tried to see the drives. I expected the RAID box to have formatted the drives and to only show me one 3TB drive.
On both the PC and the Mac, I had to open Disk Utility/Disk Management to see the drives and to be able to format them. I tried FAT and Mac OSX Journled. I tried switching the box off and on again, and all I got was the drives appearing on my desktop as individual drives. I tried copying files into one of them, and waiting a minute - nothing got copied across to the other drive!

The RAID box's page is here.

Does anybody have any ideas? I'm worried that the product doesn't seem to work as a RAID device at all!

Sam

 

[skorpien]

Not sure if this will work, but according to the manual you should switch the box to the RAID mode before turning it on:
http://www.sharkoon.com/sites/default/files/ddblock/nid-1804/images/manual_en_20845.pdf

 

[gwelmarten]

Hi
Thanks for the reply.
So, I tried that and no luck. I just have purple lights for the HDD indicators that do not flash, and when I plug it in the computer and see the drives as separate drives, these turn blue.
Sam

 

[skorpien]

Honestly, I'm not too sure. All I can do is guess based on the PDF manual.

I tried to see if there was a reset switch on the box but from the manual it seems there is not. I would try holding the mode button for a few seconds to see if that doesn't force it to format the disks properly. From the sounds of it though, it seems as though it's stuck on the Standard setting.

Have you tried contacting their tech support?

 

[gwelmarten]

Honestly, I'm not too sure. All I can do is guess based on the PDF manual.

I tried to see if there was a reset switch on the box but from the manual it seems there is not. I would try holding the mode button for a few seconds to see if that doesn't force it to format the disks properly. From the sounds of it though, it seems as though it's stuck on the Standard setting.

Have you tried contacting their tech support?

Hi
Ok - that's what I was using as well. I thought they were a really good brand as well! Do you use a RAID box? What brand would you have picked?

I did email tech support, and was told to hold the reset button whilst pressing the power button. No luck unfortunately.

Luckily, it came from Amazon, so I can return it without a problem!

Thanks again,

Sam

 

[skorpien]

I use a D-Link DNS-323 NAS. I've had no issues whatsoever, though if I were in the market to buy one I would probably go with a Synology DS212j or a QNAP solution (both manufacturers are highly recommended, especially around these forums).

If you're only going for a RAID box without any NAS functionality I can't make any recommendations unfortunately. I prefer the option to have it connected to my network personally.