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addiecool · 07:53 AM

Hi!

I have a generic USB 2.0 Hard Drive Enclosure. I have a 250 GB Seagate in that which is running fine in 10.3.6 on my dual G5.

But the problem is that if I shut down my computer or reboot the drive does not mount in OSX. I have to shut down the power on the Enclosure and switch it back on to get OSX to mount it. Is this a common problem? Is there a fix?

Also I have a firewire Oxford 911 enclosure but that does not recognise the full capacity of the 250 GB Drive since it is limited to 120 GB. Is there a workaround for this??? Like a firmware upgrade??? I saw one but it is specifically for the Maxtor 160GB

Thanks

tonyibook · Dec 7, 2004, 02:15 AM

I had an old firewire enclosure which didn't support more than 120GB. I found a firmware update which did seem to install correctly but it did not solve the problem. The limitation might be in the hardware.

I bought a new USB2 enclosure which did support larger drives but then found it had major problems formatting a 160GB drive using my iMac. It would however work with the 160GB drive if I formatted the drive in a new firewire enclosure I bought.

In the end I gave up and stuck with firewire as the drive performed much faster (4 times!!!) in the firewire case.

I am still on the lookout for a good USB2/firewire case which works with my iMac.

SSharon · Dec 7, 2004, 12:47 PM

Hmm a few things.
As far as I know the capacity limitation is a hardware one that the firmware cannot fix.
To get your external drive to mount automatically at startup you may have to unmount (eject) the drive before shutting down. This may be a pain but I suspect that its the problem, ejecting it will also ensure the safetey of the data. It might be possible to have some script unmount it for you on shutdown, I'm not sure.
I am surprised that you have found your firewire enclosure that much faster than usb2. I have two combo firewire/usb2 drives and firewire is generally only a few mb/s faster and less so when dealing with many small files.
If you are still on the lookout for a good firewire/usb2 enclosure consider the coolmax one available at newegg. My version does not have a fan, its aluminum, and uses the oxford 911 chipset, its drawback is its size, but since I don't travel with it I don't mind it.

tonyibook · Dec 8, 2004, 02:00 AM

I am not sure why my USB2 enclosure is so slow. I copied 7.5GB of files using the firewire enclosure and it took 7 minutes, using the USB2 enclosure it took 30+ minutes. When I run X-Bench it appeared a lot slower. Whether it was something to do with USB2 on my iMac, or even my USB2 hub, I am not sure.

The 160GB drive in the USB2 enclosure would not erase. Whenever I tried to erase the drive the Disk Utility application would just freeze or fail. It formatted fine in the firewire enclosure.

I guess all enclosures are not made the same.

addiecool · Dec 8, 2004, 04:53 AM

Ejecting before shoutdown is a great pain. I had no such issues with Firewire. Also even I think USB 2 is very slow compared to Firewire. File copying speeds may be almost the same but If I access a folder with numerous files USB2 takes forever to show them even if a little activity is going on. Firewire has no such such issues