MBP 1,1-10,2 Data Recovery from a Dying HDD?

[TheShortTimer]

The above is also a handy tool for verifying which drives across the major manufacturers — WD, Seagate, Toshiba — use SMR. From that table, it appears SMR has appeared most frequently on the Seagate Barracuda line.

An invaluable tool that just saved me from buying a Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM008 SMR HDD from Amazon!

The search continues...

 

[TheShortTimer]

Advice time please!

Whilst looking for a RAID enclosure, I purchased this item and after it arrived, I realised that it's not a RAID device. Neither is it a NAS unit either - contrary to the description on Amazon. Returning it and obtaining a refund isn't a problem because I bought it from Amazon but I'm wondering if it's worth keeping because I've run out of enclosures and this would provide with 5-in-1.

I'm still going to buy a RAID one but if you think this unit could be a useful addition to my setup, please share your thoughts.

 

[eyoungren]

Advice time please!

Whilst looking for a RAID enclosure, I purchased this item and after it arrived, I realised that it's not a RAID device. Neither is it a NAS unit either - contrary to the description on Amazon. Returning it and obtaining a refund isn't a problem because I bought it from Amazon but I'm wondering if it's worth keeping because I've run out of enclosures and this would provide with 5-in-1.

I'm still going to buy a RAID one but if you think this unit could be a useful addition to my setup, please share your thoughts.

The last RAID enclosure I purchased was two years ago, a Mercury Elite Pro Dual. I got mine off eBay, but am providing the link so you can see what it looks like.

OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual eSATA

Mercury Elite Pro Dual features both high-speed USB 3.1 Gen 1 & eSATA ports to offer the connectivity, versatility, and extreme speeds.

www.owc.com

I also have a Fantom Drives Data Dock II, one I bought several years back. These are great, but much harder to find now.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/828103-REG/Fantom_DDQ_4000P_DATADOCK_II_4TB_QUAD.html

As for a NAS, anything by Synology is good. I got one a few months back from someone upgrading their NAS. $60 and it came with the drives. ZyXel is also good. I'd avoid anything by Buffalo. Both my Synology and my ZyXel have web interfaces where you can manage your settings. The Synology though can be a full-blown 'server' if you want it to.

You just need to figure out what you want and what you need and then decide if what you need is what you want. Then you'll know what you're after.

 

[B S Magnet]

Advice time please!

Whilst looking for a RAID enclosure, I purchased this item and after it arrived, I realised that it's not a RAID device. Neither is it a NAS unit either - contrary to the description on Amazon. Returning it and obtaining a refund isn't a problem because I bought it from Amazon but I'm wondering if it's worth keeping because I've run out of enclosures and this would provide with 5-in-1.

I'm still going to buy a RAID one but if you think this unit could be a useful addition to my setup, please share your thoughts.

My guess is the enclosure provides the Mac with access to five different physical drives (i.e., displaying as five disks in Disk Util) bundled in a single enclosure, and that’s it.

From what little I can suss from their marketing, there isn’t even a JBOD mode, which would at least join all the HDDs together as one giant drive (as one HDDs fills up, it just continues writing quietly onto the next HDD).

If you’re using this on USB 3.0, it could be worth at least looking at picking up softRAID and, so long as you’re using that enclosure with one Mac, such as a desktop/home server, could do the software workaround (similar to what Disk Utility can also do, but softRAID, true to name, is purpose-designed for software RAID only). With five drive bays, I imagine softRAID may let you configure it in RAID 5 mode, which would give you parity should one disk fail. (And yes, I know one can do RAID 5 with as few as three disks.)

But if you’re looking for hardware RAID, like some of the WD MyPassport models and don’t want to fuss with software RAID, it’s probably worth just sending that enclosure back.

 

[Amethyst1]

My guess is the enclosure provides the Mac with access to five different physical drives (i.e., displaying as five disks in Disk Util) bundled in a single enclosure, and that’s it.

The manual confirms this.

 

[B S Magnet]

The manual confirms this.

OK, so after a bit of parsing their abysmally drafted and edited user guide — if I may say this humbly as a technical writer — I realize Orico do sell a 5-bay hardware RAID enclosure. The problem is they don’t make this clear on their own multi-bay products, like the one @TheShortTimer bought.

So he purchased the NS500U3. This is just a basic enclosure to install five HDDs. But they do sell a 5-bay hardware RAID enclosure, the NS500RC3. (There’s also a 4-bay version of the RAID called the NS400RC3; both it and the NS500RC3 support JBOD; RAIDs 0,1,3,5, and 10; and CLONE mode.) I imagine these are one or two hundred quid more than the non-RAID boxes, because one is also buying the included RAID controller card.

And from what I can suss from the way their system is intended to work, though this is not confirmed:

If planning to set up hardware RAID, one first starts with an NS500RC3 unit. The purpose of the NS*00U3 models, meanwhile, appear to be usable to daisy-chain, via USB 3.0 (probably with a very short cable) to the NS500RC3, to extend the number of disks in the hardware RAID setup. This setup can only be handled by their proprietary software (and I don’t see screen caps of their Mac or Linux interfaces, but they do say they provide them).

So I suppose, in theory, one could buy maybe one or even two NS500U3 units to place, in series, behind the NS500RC3 base RAID unit (it has to be in series, as the hecking thing, even though it’s a RAID box, has a single USB-C port[!!!!!]) to be able to work with, say, 10 or 15 HDDs for building whatever RAID one wants. But what is less clear is whether that’s definitive — not, at least, without actually trying it in field testing.

So yah. Orico have done a terrible job with communicating, and folks intending to buy a RAID enclosure can easily slip up and buy the wrong type of enclosure first, as @TheShortTimer did.

<tech-writer-and-former-copywriter-kvetching-at-the-fog-bank>This is why tech companies, especially smaller enterprises based in the PRC, still need to spend money to hire and cultivate qualified, native speakers to write their marketing and tech manuals for that principal language market, especially when they’re serious about their products (if, that is, they actually are). By and large, Japanese manufacturers figured this out by the later 1980s. Korean manufacturers figured this out by the mid-1990s. But here in the 2020s, this is still happening often… </tech-writer-and-former-copywriter-kvetching-at-the-fog-bank>

 

[TheShortTimer]

The last RAID enclosure I purchased was two years ago, a Mercury Elite Pro Dual. I got mine off eBay, but am providing the link so you can see what it looks like.

OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual eSATA

Mercury Elite Pro Dual features both high-speed USB 3.1 Gen 1 & eSATA ports to offer the connectivity, versatility, and extreme speeds.

www.owc.com

I managed to find the Quad on eBay and at a (relatively) decent price but it doesn't have a hardware RAID controller. You have to use the SoftRAID program and according to this thread, OWC are charging for the update that provides compatibility with macOS versions Big Sur and onwards.

OK, so after a bit of parsing their abysmally drafted and edited user guide — if I may say this humbly as a technical writer — I realize Orico do sell a 5-bay hardware RAID enclosure. The problem is they don’t make this clear on their own multi-bay products, like the one @TheShortTimer bought.

Worse still, the descriptions are misleading. See below...

So he purchased the NS500U3. This is just a basic enclosure to install five HDDs. But they do sell a 5-bay hardware RAID enclosure, the NS500RC3. (There’s also a 4-bay version of the RAID called the NS400RC3; both it and the NS500RC3 support JBOD; RAIDs 0,1,3,5, and 10; and CLONE mode.) I imagine these are one or two hundred quid more than the non-RAID boxes, because one is also buying the included RAID controller card.

They offer this one for basically £27 GBP more than I paid for the N500U3 with RAIDs 0,1 and Single Mode.

And from what I can suss from the way their system is intended to work, though this is not confirmed:

If planning to set up hardware RAID, one first starts with an NS500RC3 unit. The purpose of the NS*00U3 models, meanwhile, appear to be usable to daisy-chain, via USB 3.0 (probably with a very short cable) to the NS500RC3, to extend the number of disks in the hardware RAID setup. This setup can only be handled by their proprietary software (and I don’t see screen caps of their Mac or Linux interfaces, but they do say they provide them).

Thanks @B S Magnet Orico should hire you to provide technical information in their promotional materials!

So I suppose, in theory, one could buy maybe one or even two NS500U3 units to place, in series, behind the NS500RC3 base RAID unit (it has to be in series, as the hecking thing, even though it’s a RAID box, has a single USB-C port[!!!!!]) to be able to work with, say, 10 or 15 HDDs for building whatever RAID one wants. But what is less clear is whether that’s definitive — not, at least, without actually trying it in field testing.

Hardly any of these RAID boxes on Amazon provide anything beyond a single USB port.

So yah. Orico have done a terrible job with communicating, and folks intending to buy a RAID enclosure can easily slip up and buy the wrong type of enclosure first, as @TheShortTimer did.

It didn't help that the Amazon page also mentions "NAS Expansion Up to 90TB" in the description but then fails to clarify that the enclosure itself doesn't provide this feature and that another Orico product is required to enable it.

<tech-writer-and-former-copywriter-kvetching-at-the-fog-bank>This is why tech companies, especially smaller enterprises based in the PRC, still need to spend money to hire and cultivate qualified, native speakers to write their marketing and tech manuals for that principal language market, especially when they’re serious about their products (if, that is, they actually are). By and large, Japanese manufacturers figured this out by the later 1980s. Korean manufacturers figured this out by the mid-1990s. But here in the 2020s, this is still happening often… </tech-writer-and-former-copywriter-kvetching-at-the-fog-bank>

Totally agree - and as I've experienced with a mobile phone that I'll have to RMA to China, they also need to establish regional customer-service offices in the countries - or continents at least, where their products are sold. Even if it's just a couple of employees operating in one room. With these cheap(er) products, there's a hidden cost of the problems that you have to deal with when things go wrong.

 

[B S Magnet]

I managed to find the Quad on eBay and at a (relatively) decent price but it doesn't have a hardware RAID controller. You have to use the SoftRAID program and according to this thread, OWC are charging for the update that provides compatibility with macOS versions Big Sur and onwards.

Oh OWC, they desperately need a one-on-one competitor for their Mac racket…

Worse still, the descriptions are misleading. See below...
They offer this one for basically £27 GBP more than I paid for the N500U3 with RAIDs 0,1 and Single Mode.

🙃

Thanks @B S Magnet Orico should hire you to provide technical information in their promotional materials!

Available, upon retainer, for CAD$150/hr! 🤑*

* the one and only time in my lifetime I’ll ever use that emoji

Hardly any of these RAID boxes on Amazon provide anything beyond a single USB port.

“I hate the new normal.”

I came up in a time when enclosures sported at least two, and sometimes up to four ports. Yes, I understand and appreciate the industry’s mobilizing around USB 3.0 and USB-C form factor, but it has come with a steep cost in things like certified cables for rated transfers, and… it’s still USB.

It didn't help that the Amazon page also mentions "NAS Expansion Up to 90TB" in the description but then fails to clarify that the enclosure itself doesn't provide this feature and that another Orico product is required to enable it.

Yah, I can’t say I’m surprised to know that. Vetting of Amazon-sold products by Amazon staff left the station probably a decade ago, maybe longer.

Totally agree - and as I've experienced with a mobile phone that I'll have to RMA to China, they also need to establish regional customer-service offices in the countries - or continents at least, where their products are sold. Even if it's just a couple of employees operating in one room. With these cheap(er) products, there's a hidden cost of the problems that you have to deal with when things go wrong.

The rude reminder of the hidden cost seems to be a gamble consumers have accepted as the bargain of buying things now that many durable goods get designed and manufactured with planned obsolescence, as disposable products with irreplaceable parts and even less support.

I think about this whenever I have to shop for appliance products at the Canadian Tire (a uniquely Canadian big box store which, yes, changes people’s automotive tires, but is basically a hybrid hardware/sporting goods/home wares chain… called “Crappy Tire” by many, and “Canadian Fire” by me). For instance, I looked at room fans recently and found myself disappointed by the build quality of what was in stock: I doubt any model would last for five years, much less two. It’s a durable good: it should last a decade or even three, with periodic upkeep like cleaning the blades and oiling the moving parts, not ultrasonically sealed shut or held together by rivets. 😤

 

[Amethyst1]

If planning to set up hardware RAID, one first starts with an NS500RC3 unit. The purpose of the NS*00U3 models, meanwhile, appear to be usable to daisy-chain, via USB 3.0 (probably with a very short cable) to the NS500RC3, to extend the number of disks in the hardware RAID setup.

I had a look at the RAID box’s manual and it doesn’t mention daisy-chaining (which I think isn’t possible via USB anyway) or arrays spanning multiple boxes.

I came up in a time when enclosures sported at least two, and sometimes up to four ports.

We need seven-port enclosures to catch them all — eSATA, FW400, FW800, SAS, TB, USB-A/-B, USB-C.

 

[B S Magnet]

I had a look at the RAID box’s manual and it doesn’t mention daisy-chaining (which I think isn’t possible via USB anyway) or arrays spanning multiple boxes.

Yah, I didn’t think so, but there is, in the U3/non-RAID manual, mention of using it in tandem with one of the hardware RAID models. This is contradicted by their design: both series (RAID and non-RAID) have only one USB 3.0 port (which, to me, is utterly bananas).

We need seven-port enclosures to catch them all — eSATA, FW400, FW800, SAS, TB, USB-A/-B, USB-C.

I mean, I get it. Ports and buses are deprecated and obsoleted. It’s why the only place in 2020 I could find a new 3.5-inch enclosure with FW800 (and USB 3.0) ports was sold by OWC. Every single other name brand or rando manufacturer from the PRC had stopped offering them pretty much everywhere.

Nevertheless, in the age of USB3.x and Thunderbolt, external devices not permitting even short-cable daisy-chaining — or offering a protocol and port which does — is not exactly user-focussed, as there are going to be use-cases. For example, Thunderbolt 3 — using the same USB-C form factor — can be daisy-chained even as USB cannot.

I’m still on Team It’s A Shame IEEE1394 Was Binned Despite FW1600 And FW3200 Specifications Being Finalized. (I even have one of those FW1600/3200-capable cables; there are several additional receptacle holes in the plug end’s middle rectangle.) But the notion of bundling data throughput with video signal was a substantive step forward.

 

[TheShortTimer]

I've narrowed down my shortlist to a couple of choices.

The Pegasus2 6-Bay Thunderbolt 2 RAID.

Or...

The Terramaster D2 2-Bay Thunderbolt 3 RAID (and daisy chain additional enclosures over time).

What do you reckon?

 

[Amethyst1]

What do you reckon?

How many drives do you plan to eventually use? That is, would buying several Terramasters be cheaper or more expensive than the one-time purchase of the discontinued Pegasus2 R6? The Pegasus offers additional RAID levels and has a CPU of its own (the TM's manual doesn't say anything about that.)

The Terramaster D2 2-Bay Thunderbolt 3 RAID (and daisy chain additional enclosures over time).

The max speed of 760 MB/s is low for a TB3 device. Two striped SATA III SSDs should do >1000 MB/s.

 

[TheShortTimer]

How many drives do you plan to eventually use?

Five or six.

That is, would buying several Terramasters be cheaper or more expensive than the one-time purchase of the discontinued Pegasus2 R6? The Pegasus offers additional RAID levels and has a CPU of its own (the TM's manual doesn't say anything about that.)

When you put it like that, several Terramasters (or additional TB RAIDs) would be more expensive than the Pegasus.

The max speed of 760 MB/s is low for a TB3 device. Two striped SATA III SSDs should do >1000 MB/s.

Thanks for researching this. I'd assumed that being a TB3 device (and also more recent hardware) that it would offer faster data transfer rates. It looks like the Pegasus is the one to go for because despite being used, older and discontinued, the spec is superior.

As always, you've got the answers.

 

[ojfd]

To stay on topic, @TheShortTimer, how did your data recovery went?

 

[TheShortTimer]

To stay on topic, @TheShortTimer, how did your data recovery went?

Sorry, I'd been meaning to post an update on that!

I achieved a 92% success rate with the first partition - which I think is superb considering that I was bracing myself for the loss of the entire data. The ever helpful folks of Reddit (Sarcastic Mode On) were not impressed and chastised me for allowing the recovery to run for over a fortnight and doubted that the rescued data would even be readable.

There's still another partition to recover (with a small amount of files) and I'll write up a full update when I've finished that.

 

[TheShortTimer]

It looks like the Pegasus is the one to go for because despite being used, older and discontinued, the spec is superior.

Bought it!

Promise Pegasus2 R6 - Thunderbolt 2 RAID array. No Disk Included | eBay

The sleek grey design and Thunderbolt interface make it perfect for use in both personal and professional settings.

www.ebay.co.uk

Listed as £250 GBP but I received an offer of £235, which I accepted. It was the best price that I saw on eBay for Pegasus RAID units. All of the others within the same price region were either older TB1's or had less drive bays, so I think that I did alright.

 

[TheShortTimer]

@TheShortTimer sorry for the off topic nature of my post. I hope you find an acceptable NAS/RAID solution.

I did.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I did.

Very nice. I am slowly looking for a RAID5 NAS solution to upgrade my media storage but they get pricey pretty quickly. What drives/capacity will you be loading up?

 

[TheShortTimer]

Very nice. I am slowly looking for a RAID5 NAS solution to upgrade my media storage but they get pricey pretty quickly. What drives/capacity will you be loading up?

This is a good question!

It will come down to the best prices that I can find for large drive sizes and whether they're supported by the RAID. Promise have a compatibility list that's been updated right up till March this year and users have attested to running 12TB HDDs without issue so that gives me a good indication as to what will be available to me.

Of course, I'm open to suggestions.

 

[TheShortTimer]

The R6 has arrived!

There's no Thunderbolt 2 cable provided but I expected that - so I pre-emptively ordered a 2 metre one from China. That amount of length will allow me to stash it away from my already cluttered work area. However, it was pretty stingy of them not to throw in a power cable but again, that's not an issue because I have plenty on hand.

Now I need to work out which drives I'm going to use and where I'll obtain them from.

 

[Amethyst1]

The R6 has arrived!

Looks promising D) Are you going to set up one or more RAIDs or use the drives individually?

 

[TheShortTimer]

Looks promising D) Are you going to set up one or more RAIDs or use the drives individually?

In the long run, I'll almost certainly need additional RAIDs to back up my sprawling archive of DVB-T recordings - which is probably approaching 50TB by now. Gosh, that really escalated far beyond my expectations...

Immediately, I'm looking to set up this current box to manage and maintain files that are irreplaceable and accessed regularly/semi-regularly. I think 20TB ought to cover that.

Any suggestions?

 

[Amethyst1]

In the long run, I'll almost certainly need additional RAIDs to back up my sprawling archive of DVB-T recordings - which is probably approaching 50TB by now. Gosh, that really escalated far beyond my expectations...

Wow. How are you storing that archive now?

Immediately, I'm looking to set up this current box to manage and maintain files that are irreplaceable and accessed regularly/semi-regularly. I think 20TB ought to cover that.

In that case, I'd look into a RAID 5 or RAID 6 array. The former requires at least three drives and survives one of them failing (but if another fails while the array is recovering...) The latter requires at least four and can survive two of them failing at once. This will protect you against drive failure, but not against file system problems or accidental deletion.

Any suggestions?

In terms of drives or RAID levels?

 

[TheShortTimer]

Wow. How are you storing that archive now?

Across scores of external USB/eSATA/FW enclosures ranging from 2TB to 4TB in size.

In that case, I'd look into a RAID 5 or RAID 6 array. The former requires at least three drives and survives one of them failing (but if another fails while the array is recovering...) The latter requires at least four and can survive two of them failing at once. This will protect you against drive failure, but not against file system problems or accidental deletion.

Got it! RAID 6 looks like the leading contender.

In terms of drives or RAID levels?

You've already helped me to determine the RAID levels, so I guess in terms of drives.

 

[Amethyst1]

Got it! RAID 6 looks like the leading contender.

With RAID 5, the total space is Size of Smallest Drive × (Number of Drives - 1).
With RAID 6, the total space is Size of Smallest Drive × (Number of Drives - 2).