Lacie 4 big Quadra RAID USB 3.0 Disconnects

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Lacie 4 big Quadra RAID USB 3.0 Disconnects

I just bought a brand new iMac, 27 inch, late 2013 model with i7. Hooked everything up yesterday, and since then, I have had several instances of the external drive containing my iTunes library randomly disconnecting. The external drive is a Lacie 4 big quadra USB 3.0, connected via USB 3. What happens is I get an error message "please disconnect your disk properly, blah blah" then I go to finder and it's nowhere to be found. The disk is reconnected upon reboot of the external RAID. I'm using this disk as my iTunes library, and every time it gets kicked off the system, my iTunes resets the library to the local disk. A real pain, and it has happened 3 times since yesterday.

I had this exact same disk connected to my mid 2010 iMac via firewire 800 with no issues.

I was really looking forward to the speed boost offered by USB 3 over firewire, but now it just seems to cause all sorts of problems on this system.

Does anyone have an idea of what's going on or how to fix it? It's incredibly annoying, and I fear losing data.

Thanks,

Kyle

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)

Posted on Jul 23, 2014 4:05 PM

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Answer 1

sgelber

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May 24, 2015 10:38 AM in response to Kyle303

Kyle, did anyone ever respond? I've been having this exact same problem (also new iMac 27 inch, late 2013 model, i&). I think it's related to Mavericks and, even more frequently, Yosemite. I saw another entry (not the same Lacie) that suggested checking that the format was Mac OS Extended (Journaled), GUID Partition Table (which mine is). I would be grateful for any advice you are able to offer.

Kind regards,

Sue

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), OS x Yosemite (10.10.3), 3.5 GHz Intel Core iU, 24GB 1600 MHz DDR3

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Answer 2

fernab

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Aug 16, 2015 4:09 AM in response to sgelber

I'm also struggling with the same issue. Worse, it produces a kernel panic while the Mac (OSX Yosemite 10.10.4) is in sleep mode.

The problem only appears when the Quadra is connected via USB 3.0. I've had no problems using Firewire, but obviously that is not a solution. A MBP with Mavericks installed also doesn't seem to have the issue, although this might be because it only has USB 2.0 (like FW800 much slower than USB3).

Has anyone had any luck trying to reach out to Lacie support? I have a support ticket pending. None of their software such as the Lacie Desktop Manager have made any difference.

Have decided to try out the OSX El Capitan public beta to see if that helps.

Another option that came to my mind was using one of these thunderbolt docks, e.g. Mac <-> Dock via Thunderbolt <-> Quadra via USB 3.0 . Obviously that's an expensive work-around. Has anybody tried this?

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Answer 3

fernab

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Oct 17, 2015 5:05 AM in response to fernab

I switched to a Macbook with Thunderbolt dock and the problem remains.

Lacie support has been pretty much useless, recommending to disable the Mac's sleep and eco functions completely. Aside from that this is fairly drastic and impractical, it doesn't solve the problem as the Lacie has it's own sleep mode function and also might disconnect during a transfer for example. At one point they claimed it has to do with the voltage of the MAC USB ports being too low. How Lacie dare to sell this certainly not inexpensive solution, specifically for Macs, is anyone's guess.

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