usb hub fried wd external hard drive mac

I just find that being able to treat them all as separate drives gives me the most flexibility as I only use them for backup, and if I want to, for example, join two old 500Gb drives into a single 1Tb I can, etc. If you want everything in the case to be one RAID you can do that with the case's configuration. If you choose to join some of the individual disks or use some of them in a RAID you do it with the Apple software RAID in Disk Utility. Using that mode alone, it will show you 4 drives on the desktop with only one cable connecting it to the computer. While the case I am bringing to you attention can be used as a RAID case, it can also be used as I do with it- using the JBOD mode (Just a Bunch Of Disks). The reason I meant to link to the new one is that the interface to it is FireWire 800 rather than the eSATA interface on the Sans Digital one I mistakenly linked to (both of which I have actually). The one I meant to link to is here instead. So the end result is that you can plug in all the MyBook drives you want to without having to worry about that message- while multiple Passport drives will probably wind up requiring you to have one or more powered (also with a 'power brick') 4 or 7 port USB hubs attached to your system.īefore we go too far down that road, the case I linked to is not exactly the case I meant to.

They only get data from the USB connection. On the other hand, the MyBook drives get all their power from the plug in 'power brick' rather than relying on USB port power. That is why (in small print in the docs that come with WD drives) they note that with some systems the drive will need to be connected to two USB ports at the same time to get enough power- and that they will send you a 'Y' adapter cable at no charge if you run into this. USB ports are only specified to be able to provide of power at each port, and the WD drives in particular sometimes cannot even obtain enough power from a single port to power up correctly. In the case of the Passport drive, it is getting its entire power needs from the USB port as all portable hard drives do. You have identified the important difference between the two types of drives in your post so I will just tell you how that matters!

Usb hub fried wd external hard drive mac