Thecus N2050 on MAC OS X

[gingernut]

I have just purchased a N2050 and installed 2 new Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS SATA 3.0Gb/s 500 7200 32 OK 2008/05/19 as recommended on the official HDD compatibility list. pluged in and as all indications state it should appear on my desktop no problem . . . . OOooppsss I get a message stating the drive is urecognisable do I want to Initialise > Ignore > Eject . . . . and it doesn't mount !

Any suggestions ?

[Steve B]

have you actually configured the box yet? What arrangement are the Hard drives in, RAID?

[gingernut]

I have installed the drives, switched to RAID 1 as I want it mirrored, and when initially turned on I held in the INIT button as stated in the set up guide, both LED's 1 & 2 appear in Blue which I belive is correct, then connected to the MAC PRO & MAC BOOK PRO (at different time to test both) and the same message appears !

[Steve B]

can you mount from a windows machine?

[gingernut]

I have just tried it on my daughters PC running XP and it comes up with 'There may be a problems with the new hardware and it may not work properly'

I also run VMware Fusion on the MAC BookPro and it doesn't show through there either !

Do the drives when bought new need to be formatted through the MAC Disk Utility ?

[Steve B]

nope, although if you configured it in RAID1 could it still be building? i'm not sure if it needs to build the array if it's in RAID1. I dont actually own a Thecus any more.

Oooh I've just had a thought: have you actually created a share on the NAS to store your files?

[gingernut]

I thought about the Build time but the LED's are constant blue, this indicated that the build is complete as it only takes a few seconds on the initial build due to there being minimal writing required.

The NAS side of things doesn't apply as it is connected direct to the USB2 port on the MAC, the N2050 isn't a NAS machine (no Ethernet port present) it has the USB2 and eSATA which isn't yet on the MAC !!!!

[Steve B]

ahh woops, sorry my bad. Like I said, i dont own a thecus any more!

I took a look at the instructions and it seems that you need to format the disks.
Do this from Disk utility on the mac, or the Disk management in XP
What'll the drive be attached to, the Mac or the XP box?

[gingernut]

I will be attaching it to the MAC Pro as this is my primary machine with just about everything on it . .

I will try it first thing and see if I get any joy, failing that, you never know the Thecus support may get back to me before then . . . I feel like life is just a big when buying kit !!!!

Thank you for you time, I will let you know if it works !

[Steve B]

no bother, please do

[gingernut]

UPDATE : tried to format the drive . . it came back straight away with an 'input/output' error . . and still no come back from Thecus support . . you could say I'm loosing faith and patience !

[Steve B]

what did you try to format the drive with? Disk Utility?

[gingernut]

I did use disk utilty but with no joy, tried on the windows XP machine too. I have now given up and returned to the supplier and got a refund, will now look for an alternative solution.

[Steve B]

that's unfortunate!
incidentally, what were you looking for it to do, RAID?
what about just buying two drive enclosures and copying the same thing to each one?

[gingernut]

It as purchased to be used as a back up drive, I'm an illustrator / graphic designer and I have a lot of work, the intension was to use Time machine on the mac to auto back up everything. The choice of the Thecus apart from price was the raid function so I had a fail safe in case a drive failed for the work. Essentially that was why, I may now just look into inserting an additional internal and doing it that way for now, or an aditional external drive !!!!!