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Thermaltake BlacX

dukebound85

dukebound85

macrumors Core
Original poster
Jul 17, 2005
19,217
4,341
5045 feet above sea level
I got one of these which essentially let you uses an internal hdd as a external hdd

I have a 3.5" Seagate 1.5TB hdd and it works though after a while, it stops mounting and it takes so messing arounf in disk utility to get it to show up on desktop

any ideas whats going on? my 2.5" 80 gig hdd has no such issues at all in this regard and its hooked up to the same device
 
dukebound85 said:
I got one of these which essentially let you uses an internal hdd as a external hdd

I have a 3.5" Seagate 1.5TB hdd and it works though after a while, it stops mounting and it takes so messing arounf in disk utility to get it to show up on desktop

any ideas whats going on? my 2.5" 80 gig hdd has no such issues at all in this regard and its hooked up to the same device
Click to expand...

That's interesting. I have a blacx as well, but I only use it for data transfers. I have never had problems with it mounting. It only happens with the Seagate drive?
 
dukebound85 said:
I got one of these which essentially let you uses an internal hdd as a external hdd

I have a 3.5" Seagate 1.5TB hdd and it works though after a while, it stops mounting and it takes so messing arounf in disk utility to get it to show up on desktop

any ideas whats going on? my 2.5" 80 gig hdd has no such issues at all in this regard and its hooked up to the same device
Click to expand...

I bought a BlacX Duet and loaded it with a couple of 3.5", 1TB WD Caviar Green drives. They have exactly the same problem you describe. At first I thought the problem was because the drives turned on and went to sleep at (nearly?) exactly the same time, so I bought a BlacX and moved one of the drives to it. No change.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'm open to them!
 
In response to the OP

The Seagate 1.5TB 7200.11 drives have had major problems. Avoid those drives like the plague! Check out reports on Xlr8yourmac

You can update the firmware, only on a Mac Pro or a PC.....unless you have an iMac and want to take it apart. Can't update the firmware over USB. Firmware is updated from a .iso that you have to burn to disc and boot from. Seagate has been less than forthcoming on this issue so I no longer buy their 3.5" HDs

I hope that I am not going to have the same problems as you guys, I just received my Thermaltake USB and WD 1GB Green drive today. I'll post an update after a few days of use.
 
spacepower7 said:
In response to the OP

The Seagate 1.5TB 7200.11 drives have had major problems. Avoid those drives like the plague! Check out reports on Xlr8yourmac

You can update the firmware, only on a Mac Pro or a PC.....unless you have an iMac and want to take it apart. Can't update the firmware over USB. Firmware is updated from a .iso that you have to burn to disc and boot from. Seagate has been less than forthcoming on this issue so I no longer buy their 3.5" HDs

I hope that I am not going to have the same problems as you guys, I just received my Thermaltake USB and WD 1GB Green drive today. I'll post an update after a few days of use.
Click to expand...
For laptops, you can get an Expresscard/34 SATA device (assuming it has the slot), an external enclosure (some means of getting power to the drive) and go from there.

A USB floppy is handy to have as well, even for a MP.
 
Grief with Western Digital Drives Too

Criminey, every time I look askance at my WD 2 TB drives in my BlacX, they fail! Don't come up, can't mount 'em, can't verify 'em, can't repair them. NO CHOICE but to reformat 'em. I have 3 of these drives. In order to swap one in the BlacX, I have to eject BOTH of the drives, pull out the USB cable from the Mac, do the swap, reconnect the USB cable - and STILL sometimes they won't mount without powering the Mac off/on. Now again, I have to reformat one of the drives, because I did something (I don't know what) slightly out of sequence. WHY IS THIS THING SO CLUNKY? I was told you could swap disks on the fly - NOT TRUE! The Mac is not smart enough to realize that there are two separate volumes in the BlacX - if you eject only the one you swap, then remove it from the BlacX, you'll get the YOU DIDN'T EJECT IT RIGHT message, and now for the 3rd time, a drive is unusable - I have to reformat it, and re copy gigabytes of data back to it. I don't know who to be mad at: Thermaltake or Mac? Is there a fix for this? It's NOT just Seagate drives!
 
"The Mac is not smart enough to realize that there are two separate volumes in the BlacX - if you eject only the one you swap, then remove it from the BlacX, you'll get the YOU DIDN'T EJECT IT RIGHT message, and now for the 3rd time, a drive is unusable - I have to reformat it, and re copy gigabytes of data back to it. I don't know who to be mad at: Thermaltake or Mac? Is there a fix for this?"

I'll take a guess and speculate that this is due to limitations in either
1. USB standards (how volumes are seen as being mounted or unmounted by the OS), or
2. The controller of the docking station.

I'll offer a potential "workaround". It may work, or it may not.

Next time you have the BlackX set up, and eject the first drive, UNPLUG the USB cable for a moment to "physically disconnect" the BlackX from the OS.

Then, put the second drive in the BlackX, and RE-connect the USB cable.

Does that help?

If that solves the problem, let us know...
 
Doesn't Work

At the beginning, I would eject the one disk I wanted to swap, then physically remove it from the BlacX. Always, I got the You didn't eject properly message, and at least 50% of the time one of the disks (either the one I DID eject or the one left in the BlacX) came up damaged. Seemed to be unpredictable which disk it would screw up. NOTHING ELSE TO DO but to reformat and start all over again.

Oh, by the way, it just happened again. One of the disks, that I had been working with earlier just fine, thank you, suddenly disappeared. I tried ejecting both, unplugging, rebooting everything, hard down everything, bringing up everything with only the missing disk in the BlacX - I'm SCREWED AGAIN! Can't mount it, can't repair it, can't see it in Finder - the ONLY thing to do is ONCE AGAIN reformat it and recopy everything back.

I don't know if it's Western Digital or the Thermal BlacX, but this set-up does NOT work very reliably.
 
New Information on Thermaltake -WD Drives on Mac

Talked to Thermaltake this morning. Their guy said to call WD and ask for a firmware update. I called WD. Here's what they said: their 2TB internal drives ARE NOT DESIGNED TO BE USED IN SUCH AN EXTERNAL DOCKING STATION! Their drives must be connected directly to the mother board. There is no such 'firmware update'.
 
cindyjk said:
Talked to Thermaltake this morning. Their guy said to call WD and ask for a firmware update. I called WD. Here's what they said: their 2TB internal drives ARE NOT DESIGNED TO BE USED IN SUCH AN EXTERNAL DOCKING STATION! Their drives must be connected directly to the mother board. There is no such 'firmware update'.
Click to expand...

Noooooo. I hope some other information could come forward from this.
 
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