Q: Best way to connect multiple hard drives
Hi - Since getting my new Mac Pro, I have been working with two 12TB Promise Pegasus 2 Raid-5 hard drives. They've been great. But my video drive began getting scatty, and so I bought two WD-8TB backup drives, one to back up the key files on each PP2. Sadly, it was too late to back up the video drive, as one of the bays was failing. Because it's Raid-5, and thanks to the amazing and patient Venkat in Promise eSupport, I have replaced the failed drive bay, and am now waiting while it rebuilds itself with (hopefully without any data loss). Then it will get backed up.
Until it became clear that a bad drive bay was probably underlying computer freezing, dropped frames in video playback, etc., I wondered if there was some sort of best practice for attaching external drives. With Thunderbolt, you can daisy-chain; but what to what? Is there a limit of some kind? Should I connect the two Promise drives, then the closest one to the computer? Should the WDs be connected the same way, each to each, and one to the computer? Should there just be one four-drive daisy chain? ???? In the old days, you had to watch how much power was being used when connecting USB and Firewire, but is the same true for Thunderbolt?
Surely would appreciate any insight into the best way to connect multiple hard drives.
Thanks!
Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)
Posted on Jan 19, 2016 6:22 PM
but it according to Apple it [Time machine] can only back up one drive
I do not know where you got that idea, but it is not correct. Time Machine will back up all drives directly connected to your machine, unless you deliberately exclude some.
This article shows which connector uses which Bus:
Use multiple displays with your Mac Pro (Late 2013) - Apple Support
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Posted on Jan 19, 2016 8:41 PM