Macally G-S350SUAB2 external HD enclosure question

Question

Macally G-S350SUAB2 external HD enclosure question

I have a Macally G-S350SUAB2 external enclosure and I had a WD 250GB hard drive in it. Recently it stopped mounting on my iMac running 10.5.8. and I tried everything to get it to come up. Tried different machines and nothing. Even took it to a tech where I work and he said that the drive is bad.

So I bought a WD 500GB drive to replace the 250 and now I can't get the 500 to mount either. I've got power to the drive and it's spinning up, I'm just not sure what to do to try to get this thing working. It doesn't show up at all using Disk Utility. Could it be something with the external housing that could be screwing this thing up?

The power light on the front seems to be slightly dimmer than what I remember as well.

Any ideas?

Posted on Nov 8, 2010 7:59 PM

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Answer 1

K Shaffer

Level 7

34,978 points

Nov 8, 2010 10:01 PM in response to heath hartwig

Sometimes, the external hard drive enclosure's power supply can be bad.
Or there may be a switching circuit inside the housing that has gone bad.

There are several items which could be acting up; and between the HDD
brand manufacturer and the external enclosure manufacturer, there should
be some glimmer of customer support from their home web site links.

Usually, when a certain brand hard disk drive acts up, in the past that meant
one would try a different brand. And if an enclosure acts up, it could be just a
power supply going weak (or failing, since some supply 12v/5v/2v, etc at the
same time, via several wires, inside the housing) and it may be time to get a
different brand enclosure, too. Some kits include differing brands of HDDs.

Some cited examples of reasonably good new hardware include drives from
OWC, such as those which support booting FW400/800 and USB2.0 with Mac
and have an external power supply; good for new and older Macs, & PCs.

The product you have appears to be fairly new, within the past year:
http://www.macally.com/en/Product/ArticleShow.asp?ArticleID=337

However, there may be other things to consider; between the major components
and the important minor players within the device. Power supply? Maybe.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

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Answer 2

Allan Jones

Level 9

68,696 points

Nov 8, 2010 10:27 PM in response to heath hartwig

Could it be something with the external housing that could be screwing this thing up?

With the second drive not working, that starts to sound like the problem. Does it mount on any other computers? If you change the connectivity (USB to FireWire or vice-versa), does it work any better.

External enclosures have their own chipsets acting as controllers and it's certainly possible something is amiss in the enclosure's brain.

It might be a good idea to contact Macally tech support. Sometimes there are reset functions that can help.

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