Comments on: A little bit Mirrored, a little bit Striped.

By: Anthony Siow

Anthony Siow — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 11:34:52 +0000

Call me impatient but I just can’t wait any longer.

So I found that I had my backups in 4 other HDD and I had to find a way to get the Qx2 to be recognised by my iMac. I took out Drive C and reformatted and checked it. There wasn’t any problem detected. Strange since this was the drive that started all the problem. Strange also since this was a RMA disk since Dec 2010 when the previous one had also ‘crashed’

Anyway after reinserting the formatted Drive C and hoping for a rebuild, the problem persisted. The Qx2 just beeped and the rebuilding light on and not flashing. None of the drive lights were on. Looking at the manual, a steady rebuilding light indicated one or more drive was faulty. So I suspected Drive D was crashed as well since that light was also on previously.

Funny thing was, I couldn’t get iMac to recognized Drive D (connected via a HDD enclosure). At this point I was ready to reformat all the HDD and rebuild my RAID from my backup. Funny thing again was Drive A & B too could not be recognized by iMac. It appears that the ‘incomplete’ shut down had corrupted the RAID array and ‘hung’ it in a state that cannot be recognized by iMac.

What should I do now? I put all four drives back into the Qx2, changed the RAID5 array to 3+1 and switched on the Qx2. Viola, the iMac recognized it immediately but told me it was unformatted. I shut down, changed the RAID back to my original RAID5 and again, iMac recognized it as unformatted. I reformatted the entire RAID, set the partitions, and now it is back in working condition receiving backups from my other HDD for the last 24h and still going.

My question and concern now being:-
1. was Drive C really faulty in the first place
2. why was Drive D registered as faulty as well. its v rare to get two HDD bought at different times to breaking down at the same time
3. why is it working flawlessly now after a reformat
4. COULD IT BE A FAULTY RAID CONTROLLER

The last concern is really worrying because it means future apparent HDD crash may not be HDD fault but a RAID CONTROLLER problem.

Anyone has any comments? I’m more than happy to listen.
For now, I’m going to the shops to get more HDD to get a 3rd copy of my backups.

By: Anthony Siow

Anthony Siow — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 13:47:40 +0000

My Mercury Elite AL Pro Qx2 is setup for RAID 5 with 4x 1.5 TB HDD. It has four logical partitions
One day, it started beeping and Drive C light was flashing.
I tried to eject all four partitions but it would not complete the ejection process and there was a recurring clicking sound from the drives.
Then Drive D light started flashing.
I shut down iMac and there was an error msg which I couldn’t read in time before the screen went black.
Then I switched off the Qx2.
The next time I switched it on, the rebuilding light was on but not flashing. None of the drive lights were on. The RAID refuse to mount and the fan sounds like in overdrive. It has stayed like that forever. HELPPP !!

I have just contacted tech support but could not find some information required in the contact form hence am skeptical if they will give me a reply. Was wondering if I can get some answers here first.

By: OWC Support

OWC Support — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:10:41 +0000

Thank you for your comments and feedback.
Your opinion and experiences are very important to us.

Other World Computing sincerely apologizes for the continued failure of your Qx2 solution.

All of our customers’ experiences are extremely valuable to us and we understand that it can be frustrating when unexpected issues such as this arise.

At this point, we would like to assist as soon as possible.
Our Technical Support Supervisor (Brian Bellman) should be reaching out to you on Tuesday, February 1 so that this does not become a further inconvenience to you.

We hope that we will be successful in addressing your concerns and look forward to assisting in the future.

By: Scott

Scott — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:32:01 +0000

I have 2 QX2s and both have been trouble for a long time. They both exhibit the same issue – about every 3 weeks the fan just stops and the volumes goes offline. Power cycling fixes it for the next 2-3 weeks or so.

OWC tech support won’t help with one of them because it’s over a year old and the newer one has to be sent in before I can get a replacement or fix. So now I need to stand-up another solution (not from OWC) to backup my 6TB MacPro before I can send in the newer unit. Not very good service (and awful product) in my opinion and it will cost OWC my future business.

By: OWC Grant

OWC Grant — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 23:01:01 +0000

That’s great to hear Kevin! We do find many many professionals making the Qx2 their choice of backup and storage. We hope to someday add a few photographers to our Pro User’s page:

http://eshop.macsales.com/owcpages/procorner/

We launched that a few months ago and seems to be a bit heavy on audio pros. We’ll be sure to get more photographers and videographers added soon!

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 22:28:37 +0000

I wanted to stop by and tell you how happy I’m with the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2. I’m a professional Photographer out Phoenix that needed to backup my photography with confidence. I have over 2.8TB of photography. I needed a good backup system for my clients just incase they called me 6 months down the road needing photography they lost. I was using several 500GB hard drives to back up all my photography( big Mistake). Also had several other hard drive just sitting around with photography I did years ago. BY buying a utilizing OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 with 2TB hard drives in each space. I was able to load all of my photography onto one system.

I just wanted to give a big THANK YOU OWC for having KICKA** products.

Kevin

By: OWC Grant

OWC Grant — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 00:32:24 +0000

Hi Mike and thanks for stopping by. We’re still working on full confirmation/firmware update regarding these 3TB drives in the Qx2. The Qx2 shouldn’t have any trouble powering that WD drive. Some FireWire devices just don’t have enough ‘juice’ to bus power other devices in the chain…and others for some reason draw too much and negate the ability to power via FW daisy chain. So hard to tell what’s going on with your Q and WD drive…

By: mike@causi

mike@causi — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 18:35:15 +0000

Any confirmation on the 3TB drives? Not sure if I buy a smaller (or empty) Qx2 configuration, if I can purchase these larger drives and install it in the system, at a later time?

Another question; I purchased a Voyager Q with firewire800 support and already owned a bus-powered WD 2.5″ 500GB firewire800 drive and tried to put the WD drive after the VQ in a daisy chain. However, the VQ would not power the WD. There was only one firewire on the WD, so the other way is not an option. Will the Qx2 be able to power the WD or am I out of luck with that option, too?

Thanks.

By: OWC Grant

OWC Grant — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:55:19 +0000

Hi Richard and thanks for asking about the Qx2 and the new 3TB drives. At this time, our dual bay and rack mount solutions are approved for use with it. Still working on an update for the Qx2…we hope to have it soon so it too can utilize the 3TB drives.

By: Richard Murray

Richard Murray — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 19:39:38 +0000

Noticed that OWC is now offering the Qx2 with 3TB Hitachi drives (OWCMEQX2T12.0S). So are you still in testing?

By: OWC Grant

OWC Grant — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:26:27 +0000

Still in testing…no definitive answer yet…so hold tight pls.

By: Richard Murray

Richard Murray — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 22:37:42 +0000

Does the Qx2 support using 3TB drives or has OWC tested this?

By: OWC Michael

OWC Michael — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 21:15:30 +0000

The Qx2 is designed to work plugged into the wall or in conjunction with a UPS.

In certain situations, some of which were shown here in the thread, our Technical Support team has used the suggestion of removing the UPS in some setups simply to diagnose whether there was a power issue from the UPS unit itself.

A UPS will minimize your risk of issues after a power surge/outage, there is no reason that we would not recommend using the QX2 with a UPS.

By: Richard Murray

Richard Murray — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:34:57 +0000

I notice there have been several attempts here to get OWC to clarify if you can use the Qx2 with a UPS or if, as several commenters have said they were told, OWC recommends not putting the Qx2 on a UPS.

My Qx2 has been running without issue since I received it last December as a 0TB unit that I put four Hitachi 2TB drives into. During most of that time I did not run it attached to a UPS, but after five power outages of various lengths I’ve hooked it up to my APC Smart UPS just to keep it from going down hard when the power goes out.

So now I’m going to ask the same question and hope I’m not ignored like the other commenters here. Does OWC recommend running the Qx2 without a UPS, and if so, why?

By: OWC Chris S.

OWC Chris S. — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:11:07 +0000

Unfortunately, the Blog Comments section is not a good place for troubleshooting under most circumstances. In most cases, your best bet would be to contact our Tech Support line at 1-800-275-4576 if you’re having troubles.

Fortunately, in this particular case, I was able to get your information to our Tech Support group; someone should be contacting you regarding this problem shortly.

By: Aydin Odyakmaz

Aydin Odyakmaz — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 16:05:19 +0000

Have this same problem of beeping on the Qx2 which I use for video editing. Raid 5. I will try the plugging into separate wall unit , but I have a very reliable APC surge unit, so not sure why this suggestion is made on the forum. I purchased almost a year ago Aug 26 and want to make sure that this problem is noted as once the warranty is up I’ll get the old warranty is up deal. I also have many other OWC drives and only had a problem with one that went for fan repair. It died a year later an I lost a 1TB of info, luckily nothing I could live without. This may be my last purchase depending how this is handled. ( just bought some RAM last week).

By: OWC Chris S.

OWC Chris S. — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:02:07 +0000

We’re sorry you appear to be having problems with your Qx2 – have you contacted Technical Support yet? They may be able to help you resolve your issue better than we can here in the comments section.

By: Jason Haines

Jason Haines — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 03:12:29 +0000

A problem I have been experiencing with my Qx2 RAID 5 unit is transfer speeds will drop from over 100MB/sec over eSATA, and from a lot less over FW800, to anything from 10-20MB/sec. This will not change unless I turn the unit off and repower it up. The time it takes to revert back to the slow speeds can be anything from 3 days to 10 minutes…

Anyone else had this problem?