Looking for external case that will hold multiple 3.5"/2.5" drives AND won't disconnect when Mac Studio Max goes to sleep

[Ladd]

I recently upgraded from a 2009 Mac Pro to a Mac Studio Max (64GB/1TB) and had planned to put all four of the Pros spinning 3.5" 4TB hard drives in one of my Mediasonic four-bay enclosures (set to non-RAID) that connect to the Studio either via USB3.0 or eSATA-to-USBC cables. While this appeared to work fine, I find that when I put the Studio to sleep at night, the hard drives disconnect. I've tried both types of cables and the same thing happens, so perhaps the issue is with the enclosures. I suppose I could just NOT put the Studio to sleep, but would prefer to solve the issue if possible.

Requesting any advice on how to solve this problem with these enclosures.

Short of that, requesting recommendations for currently-available enclosures that will hold four or more drives and won't have the disconnect issue when the Studio goes to sleep.

 

[wdhpgx]

FWIW, I stopped trying to put my Studio Max to sleep; it wasn't clear when or if it did sleep, and when it woke or went back to sleep, and since it seems to have very little noise and power when on it didn't seem worth the effort anymore; now I just sleep the display.

 

[pastrychef]

I recently upgraded from a 2009 Mac Pro to a Mac Studio Max (64GB/1TB) and had planned to put all four of the Pros spinning 3.5" 4TB hard drives in one of my Mediasonic four-bay enclosures (set to non-RAID) that connect to the Studio either via USB3.0 or eSATA-to-USBC cables. While this appeared to work fine, I find that when I put the Studio to sleep at night, the hard drives disconnect. I've tried both types of cables and the same thing happens, so perhaps the issue is with the enclosures. I suppose I could just NOT put the Studio to sleep, but would prefer to solve the issue if possible.

Requesting any advice on how to solve this problem with these enclosures.

Short of that, requesting recommendations for currently-available enclosures that will hold four or more drives and won't have the disconnect issue when the Studio goes to sleep.

I just went through this same scenario. I had a Sans Digital 4 bay enclosure sitting in my closet and tried to use it with my old drives with my Mac Studio.

The enclosure has USB3 and eSATA connectors. USB3 worked great but would disconnect and I'd get a whole bunch of the "Did not eject properly" notifications on wake.

Next, I purchased a Thunderbolt to eSATA adaptor. I didn't get the notifications but performance would steady decline on large file transfers to the point where it was like USB2. I don't know if it was overheating or whatever but it was unacceptable.

Finally, I gave up and just decided to put the drives in a NAS and use it through 10GBase-T.

 

[haralds]

USB disconnect has been an issue on Mac since it has had USB that has not been fixed. In the past, I used a utility to eject on sleep and reconnect on wake.
Thunderbolt and NAS are the way to go!

 

[handheldgames]

I recently upgraded from a 2009 Mac Pro to a Mac Studio Max (64GB/1TB) and had planned to put all four of the Pros spinning 3.5" 4TB hard drives in one of my Mediasonic four-bay enclosures (set to non-RAID) that connect to the Studio either via USB3.0 or eSATA-to-USBC cables. While this appeared to work fine, I find that when I put the Studio to sleep at night, the hard drives disconnect. I've tried both types of cables and the same thing happens, so perhaps the issue is with the enclosures. I suppose I could just NOT put the Studio to sleep, but would prefer to solve the issue if possible.

Requesting any advice on how to solve this problem with these enclosures.

Short of that, requesting recommendations for currently-available enclosures that will hold four or more drives and won't have the disconnect issue when the Studio goes to sleep.

I'm using an OWN Thunderbay 4 and it's not running into the disconnect problems that seems to plague hard disks on the Mac Studio.

 

[jtopp]

I recently upgraded from a 2009 Mac Pro to a Mac Studio Max (64GB/1TB) and had planned to put all four of the Pros spinning 3.5" 4TB hard drives in one of my Mediasonic four-bay enclosures (set to non-RAID) that connect to the Studio either via USB3.0 or eSATA-to-USBC cables. While this appeared to work fine, I find that when I put the Studio to sleep at night, the hard drives disconnect. I've tried both types of cables and the same thing happens, so perhaps the issue is with the enclosures. I suppose I could just NOT put the Studio to sleep, but would prefer to solve the issue if possible.

Requesting any advice on how to solve this problem with these enclosures.

Short of that, requesting recommendations for currently-available enclosures that will hold four or more drives and won't have the disconnect issue when the Studio goes to sleep.

Thunderbay 4 by Owc. My drives don't disconnect.

 

[Ladd]

Thanks for the information. My new-to-me OWC Thunderbay 4 (Thunderbolt 3) enclosure arrives Saturday.

 

[jacklivehere]

I am using Hagibis USB-C Hub with Dual Hard drive enclosures from amazon, and it is working fine with two ssd(one SATA and One NVMe).

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[Ladd]

I've now had the four-bay OWC Thunderbay 4 (Thunderbolt 3) enclosure for more than a week and loaded with four spinning drives it has reliably gone to sleep and woken back up numerous times.

On a related note, I have replaced the fan in the back of the enclosure with a Noctua NF-A9 FLX 92mm fan. The kit comes with two speed reducing cables and I am using the one that slows the fan down to 1050 RPM and the fan noise is now much less than the hard drive noise. The supplied three-pin connector for the fan fits the one inside the OWC case so installation was a snap.