Why does my Thermaltake Silver River 5G USB 3.0 External Drive keep disappearing?

Normally I do not let my Mac's auto sleep and only put them to sleep after I have ejected and switched off my Time Machine and Bootable Clone Drives. Then vise-versa wake the Mac and switch on the drives.

To me it seems like maybe the Green Drive is partly, if not at fault here. They have WDs blasted nod off firmware on them that only works with Windows and certain chipsets.

see WD Green

You might check with WD and see what they think or if they have a fix.

Other than that, I might switch out the Green for one of there Blue's or Black's.

I have a Thermaltake USB3.0 enclosure (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=717003 4&CatId=2780 ) into which I installed a 1T HD. On my late 2012 iMac (OSX 10.8.3), it does exactly the same thing: It mounts and works just fine for a while, then it seems to disappear. Then when Time Machine tries to access it, it hangs. I am thinking its the Thermaltake's fault, not the HD inside. I had been using the same HD in a NexStarCX USB2.0 enclosure, and it was working fine. Maybe there will be a firmware upgrade for the Thermaltake?

I received an answer from Thermaltake technical support. I asked if perhaps there was a firmware upgrade to prevent their drive from disappearing. They wrote on 22/04/2013:

Thank you for contacting Thermaltake Customer Service.

No firmware to do it. Just set system to never sleep. System will cut/disconnect the USB when it into sleep mode.

that is issue with sleep mode.

I don't know if this occurs with other USB 3.0 drives and Time Machine. Somehow, I doubt it. Anyway, it sounds as though my Thermaltake is destined for eBay...

you tried disk utility?

If you have an USB2 hub, you can try to connect the disk attached to the USB2 hub.

There seems to be some issues connecting some USB3 peripherals straight to the Mac.

In that case, I'll be using it as a USB 2.0 drive at USB 2.0 speeds. Might as well just use my old USB 2.0 drive housing.

I've tried opening Disk Utility when the drive "disappears". I don't remember for sure, but i think DU just hangs.

I have a Western Digital 3TB drive Red on my mac mini late 2011, I bought a new case for a few Euros

works perfectly except that I could not partition it as I wanted,

it is not advisable to use it as a boot disk

for more details: https://westerndigital.secure.force.com/?lang=it

you need the system 10.8.3 to use 3TB disks

Having just about the exact same issues. I'm using the Thermaltake Max 5g enclosure. The problem becomes most prominent when my mac goes to sleep and then wakes up. The drive just seems to go into a continuous read frenzy and never stops - soon after all resources and apps start locking up. Using a macbook pro 2012. Never had this issue - ever - until i started using this enclosure...

I too have the same issue. 2 WD Green drives, and Thermaltake BlacX 5G dual. USB 3.0

kinda frustrating. i noticed longer startups; until i power off the thermaltake. WD could swap my drives i guess and I go for something else like black. I think i'll wait it out now; i've got other drives to use..

I have a Western Digital 3TB drive Red from over a year and partitioned into four discs, obviously reading 3TB divided into four discs it takes more time than a 500 Mb. as if they were four disks of 800 Mb to be mounted one at a time.

He stops, if not used with no need to turn it off (it remains in standbuy)

is quite fast,

What do you expect more?

P.S. it is probably a problem with the eclosure of Thermaltake

I have a 3TB red as well; its mounted via FW800 to a Seagate Go Flex Desktop adapter. --- I thought this drive was the issue; but actually its just fine.

I think the issue may more be something to do with WD Green drives in general.

che system hai installato?

Over the years I had several such problems with external drives either not booting or working correctly with any version of the Mac OS. So now I always buy my external drives and other peripherals from OWC at http://www.macsales.com/.

Their external drives always boot correctly and allow me to include my favorite hard drives such as Western Digital. They also guarantee their stuff 100% to work correctly. They specialize in Macs.

And no, I do not work for Other World computing, but I always recommend them to avoid what you’ve just had to go through.🙂

that's good to know!. what enclosure did you try with? please keep us posted with your results.

OWC is a pretty popular mac store. Sigh i just bought this thermaltake sometime this year, and it was not cheap!