Help! Mac Pro and a temperamental external hard disk

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I run three Freecom Quattro external HDD on my Mac Pro [10.6.8]. Two are 3TB, one 500GB. Recently I decided to replace the 500 GB disk with another 3TB, which is where the problems began.

One disk was fine but the second [disk 2 we’ll call it] started cutting up rough. It disappeared altogether from Finder and Disk Utility when I fired up the new drive and I haven’t been able to get them to work together since. Even when I’m careful to eject the other disks before starting the new one I keep getting ‘the disk wasn’t properly ejected’ messages whenever I try starting or re-staring ‘disk 2’ in the presence of the newcomer.

It strange because I can restore the 500GB hard drive and all three show in Disk Utility and Finder without a hitch. Is it running 3x3TB disks it’s objecting to or something else? I’ve swapped everything about and I’m certain it isn’t the cables or the Firewire drive [don't suppose the 500GB drive would work anyway if the explanation were that simple].

This is my second attempt. I returned the first one I bought to Amazon only to have the same problem show up in the replacement. Since I’ve successfully formatted the new drive I’m fairly certain it isn’t a faulty disk. Thanks for any suggestions.
 
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Why not simply install in bays two, three or four?
 
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Why not simply install in bays two, three or four?

Hello Harry and thanks for getting back to me. Unless I misunderstand you you're assuming bays 2, 3 and 4 are free. They're not. That's why I bought externals - as an adjunct to what I have all ready. Furthermore that would only sidestep rather the solve the problem. It makes no sense to me that I can support three of these rascals in the normal way just so long as one has a lower spec.
 
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Are all connected via USB2? There have been some reports of problems with FW800. Have a read of this very interesting article:-


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2757821?start=0&tstart=0

Good of you to reply again Harry. Interesting thread as you say. However the problem with posters on it appears to be their machine's failure to recognize the drive capacity. Mine recognizes everything okay, and I've even formatted it. I just can't use it in conjunction with one of my other two external disks ['disk 2'], which completely disappears as soon as I switch on the new one. Not sure it's the same problem but it does suggest potential difficulties with Firewire and I appreciate your bringing this to my attention. If it's something other than an iffy disk, as I suspect, I'll have once again to return a perfectly good unit. I'm reluctant to try USB. It's too slow and I've 2TB+ of data to transfer.
 
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Only other suggestion is a USB3 PCI-E card should the drives be USB3. Sonnet made a reliable unit.
 
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Only other suggestion is a USB3 PCI-E card should the drives be USB3. Sonnet made a reliable unit.

Thanks Harry. I appreciate your help. Looks like I'll be sending it back after all.
 

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