Connecting OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual-Bay (RAID) Enclosure help setup

Question

Connecting OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual-Bay (RAID) Enclosure help setup

System info:
Enclosure: OWC Mercury Elite-Pro Dual Bay (RAID Enclosure)
Comps: Mac Pro & MacBook Pro 13"
OS: 10.6.4
Connected enclosure via firewire800 with 2x 2tb hitachi drives.

So I picked up an Open Box version of essentially this enclosure:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW936AL2/

(the differences is, the light is not in the direct center of the enclosure as pictured and the little blue switch is not on the logicboard under the fan like it was pictured in the instructional booklet).

Now going through the instructional manual, and wanting to set it up as a RAID 0 i noticed that on my enclosure there wasnt a place on the board for it to switch it to proper type of configuration i wanted.

And their site is a little messy (imho) to find the proper info and so many variants of their enclosures.

So heres what my enclosure board looks like:
http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/7708/owc.jpg

I put two 2TB drives in the enclosure (2 Hitachi Deskstar 7200s).
plug it in via FireWire800 to my MacBookPro and get the initialize the drive alert and thats where iam at. I havent set up this particular enclosure before so im not sure if its all software controlled now and the best way to go about configuring it the way I want it to (RAID 0 for now).

and how to go about in the future changing it if i say wanted RAID 1 or JBOD.

any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

MacBookPro 2.2 15", Mac OS X (10.4.10), MacPro2.66 | iMac 2.8 24" | Apple Cinema Display 20"

Posted on Aug 19, 2010 7:59 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Aug 19, 2010 8:28 PM in response to Frank Einstein

The Apple Discussions is for Apple products. You should contact OWC tech support for assistance with their products.

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Answer 2

Aug 19, 2010 8:28 PM in response to Frank Einstein

Are you sure thats the model you have? OWC makes at least three different RAID versions using the same enclosure with similar names. One model is RAID 0 another is RAID 1, and the third is the one you linked to which support RAID 0, 1, and Span.

Tom

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Answer 3

Aug 19, 2010 8:35 PM in response to Tom Nelson1

OWC isnt available until tomorrow and this was purchased for a project tonight.
Their instructional manual is different.

AND YES that is the one i got.
the box specifically says:

Mercury elite-AL Pro dual bay
"Quad interface" performance raid solution.
RAID Support: RAID 0, RAID 1, SPAN

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Answer 4

Aug 20, 2010 11:57 PM in response to Frank Einstein

the proper way to configure the enclosure is tricky as YES I have too dealt with the misleading instructions.

try this firmware updater:
http://home2.owc.net/~tech/OWC/Firmware/936AP_mac.zip

you just run the setup software, and it will adjust the actual firmware of the enclosure.

also I Believe you need to select "enable large format drives" option if you want 2tb or larger drives in RAID 0

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Answer 5

Aug 21, 2010 12:59 PM in response to Frank Einstein

Make sure when you are trying to configure the RAID...have it directly plugged into the USB or FireWire port..DO NOT DaisyChain them as it wont even show up in the utility.

I learned that one the hard way trying to set up a rig I was using.
Hope that helps!

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Answer 6

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Aug 21, 2010 1:29 PM in response to Frank Einstein

Some of these have a bridge that allows built in RAID, this one it seems does not, and you have to initialize the drives. And that is where you left it? waiting to create partitions?

I am more the trial and error, you can always reformat or erase and try again.

At first I thought you had one of the higher end quad-drive cases with support for RAID0, 1, 5, JBOD.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEQX2T4.0S/

PDF manual:
http://eshop.macsales.com/techcenter/manuals/mercuryelite/OWCMANMAL2ASY.pdf

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Answer 7

Aug 21, 2010 11:42 PM in response to The hatter

thanks, though the problem has been resolved courtesy of Loudspeakermusic's link.

The problem is that the manual doesnt state anything about this particular drive.
As you can see from the image:

mine does not have the actual jumper settings like indicated of Page 5 of the PDF Manual (the same Manual i got with the actual enclosure).

So the firmwire utility helped as I was able to create the RAID or RAID 1 or SPAN/JBOD properly.

According to OWC if there drive was over 1TB in size I must click on the Enable Large Disk box to allow me to use 2x2TB drives then once I set the firmware to RAID 0, i can format them properly in Disk Utility.

So far I'm running the 2x2TB (4TB) in RAID 0 on my enclosure fine and can transfer just well.
Like Loudspeaker stated, i have to have the drive directly connected and not daisychained as I did not know why I wasnt able to change the firmware settings.

as shown:

Thanks for all the pointers!

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Answer 8

Aug 21, 2010 11:49 PM in response to Frank Einstein

Thanks for the star!

Yeah I ran into the exact same issue myself.
I contacted OWC a couple of times and finally figured it out.

best of luck and enjoy your new 4TB!

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