OWC USB Drive Dock: powers down w/out warning

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Level 1

4 points

OWC USB Drive Dock: powers down w/out warning

I'm about to send the second one of these back, wanted to check here to see if anyone's had similar experience. My assumption is that it's the dock, but I've seen enough recent (and perhaps tangentially-related) weirdness with MacBooks & external drives to make me somewhat uncertain about that.

The dock just shuts down - randomly. It's not just the drives unmounting, the dock powers off completely. I've got three different SATA drives and an SSD, and it does the same thing with all of them, in any combination. (The same drives behave normally in my OWC Thunderbolt dock.) It has no relation to whether the computer's gone to sleep, and I've tried it in multiple USB ports, including an external Anker multiport hub, with the same results. I've done PRAM and SMC resets, and OSX's Energy Saver is set to not "put drives to sleep when possible."

iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, Late 2015)
OSX 10.11.6

Seagate 8TB SATA (ST8000NM0055)

Seagate 3TB SATA (ST3000DM001)

HGST 8TB SATA (0F26902)
Samsung EVO 850 500GB SSD

iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, Late 2015), OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Jan 7, 2018 12:38 PM

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Answer 1

den.thed

Level 10

91,342 points

Jan 13, 2018 11:25 AM in response to iWood-MHP

click-itty-click on > OWC Customer Service, they are really good about supporting and standing behind there products.

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Answer 2

Jan 26, 2018 4:46 PM in response to iWood-MHP

Same issue with my OWC dual USB drive dock. Randomly shuts down (full power off). Even when in use copying files. Using it connected to a 2017 MacBook Pro. Several other drive docks (including an older OWC Voyager Firewire dock via Thunderbolt Display) all work without issue. As a test I've run the drive dock with only 1 drive for 16 hours without issue. Could it be two drives drawing too much power? I often run two x 6TB Seagate Barracuda Pro's.

macOS Sierra 10.12.6

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Answer 3

Jan 26, 2018 9:53 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

Hi Peter,

my OWC USB dual drive dock is directly connected via USB-C to the 2017 MacBook Pro. Though I do have an Apple USB - A to C adaptor to convert the USB-A cable for the MackBook Pro. Have also tried other USB-C adaptors just in case.

My reference to power was that it 'seems' the Drive Dock has only ever shuts down when it is running with both drives powered up.

regards

Steve

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Answer 4

iWood-MHP Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 14, 2018 11:32 AM in response to den.thed

I've done that - their solution was "We'll replace it." Which is great, yes! But I've already replaced it once, and this is the second one that's done the exact same thing. So I'm asking around to see if anyone's had a similar experience, because if the third one does it, it's much more likely that it's not the dock, and that something's amiss with the iMac, OSX, or my setup. (Which I probably should've mentioned...can't edit my original post anymore, though.)

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