External HD

[Leonlec]

I just recently got the new 24" iMac with a 500gb HD

doing alot of video editing i chew threw alot of HD space, at the moment i have a 300gb sata, a 200gb ide, a 80gb ide and a 40gb ide.

i used to use these hard drives on a windows machine and have since formated all but the 200gb into mac osx journled.

to access these drives i have 4 "ide/sata to usb" cables conected to a usb hub

my problem is i have run into alot of trouble getting this setup to work
and the 300gb drive disconects during the middle of a transfer (of 50gb at a time which is SO FRUSTRATING!!!) even when it is the only drive conected (ie no usb hub used)

could anyone shed some light on these issues for me
would apreciate it

 

[mac57]

Hi Leonlec, welcome to Mac Forums!!

I am going to guess that you are overloading the capabilities of that one poor USB hub. To validate this idea, is it possible to move the 300 GB drive to a separate USB connector entirely and see if this resolves the issue?

If it does, you may need to buy a second USB hub.

 

[Leonlec]

Yes i figured that the hub may have been failing
yes i have already tried to use the 300gb with out the hub (conected straight to the mac)

i found that when the drives where NTFS format they could tansfer large files
but since i have fromated them they seem to shut down in the middle of a transfer. and wont mount on my powerbook g4.

interestingly it always happens half way through a transfer regardles of the size of the file (have tried 50gb and 40mb sizes)

any thaughts (could it be the formating?)

 

[mac57]

What am I missing here? Mac OS X can't write NTFS, so how were you writing large files onto the drives? What format are they now?

 

[baggss]

No, he says OSX Journaled....

I suspect the drives may be overheating. Many external drives have built in protection that will spin down and dismount the drive when it gets too hot. This is done to protect the drive itself. Large file transfers would create a lot of heat so.......

The only other thing I can think of is what mac57 said, you are overloading the USB bus somehow.

 

[immdb]

Do you have access to a Mac desktop system where you can install each drive as an internal drive? If they work then it isn't the drive(s).