[mythtv-users] Problems with External USB Drives

[Jonno]

On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 10:27 AM, Jonno <jonnojohnson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 1:01 PM, Steve Peters - Priority Electronics
> <steve at priorityelectronics.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> So my question for the list before I go ahead and buy another drive
>>>> is, what is the best setup for storage? I have an eSATA port so I was
>>>> thinking of using a 750GB external eSATA drive.
>>
>>
>> John, I had the same experience when trying to use usb drives. I could not
>> use them for storage folders. Myth just doesn't like playing off of them. I
>> do however have several of them setup as my video directories for the movies
>> I rip into myth (and recordings I transcode into myth) but for live tv and
>> regular recordings, usb drives and myth just don't get along.
>>
>> If only you could use mplayer to do the live tv/recording watching in myth,
>> then it'd work great.
>
> Interesting. FYI it seemed to work great for the first 6 months or so.
>
> Anyhow, the current setup is(was) external USB enclosure to a IDE
> drive. I actually have SATA ports on my motherboard and I got a
> SATA-eSATA cable that I'm going to route out of the case to an
> external eSATA enclosure with an eSATA drive.

You wouldn't believe this. I bought a Maxtor 1TB SATA hdd and put it
in my external hhd encolosure,
(http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/Product.aspx?C=1287&ID=1650). I hooked
it up over eSATA and it worked great for a couple of weeks. Yesterday
it had trouble spinning up (kept making a noise like it was trying to
spin up) but after a couple of power cycles it started working. Then
this morning I had to reboot and it just wouldn''t spin up. I took it
out of the enclosure and attached it directly to the motherboard power
supply and it spins up no problem.

I seem to be having terrible problems with external hdd enclosures.
The first one I had about a year ago was an AccomData USB enclosure
and after a few months that quit working (not sure what the problem
was). I replaced it with the Thermaltake above and after a while the
power brick had something go bad in it (burnt smell) so I replaced it.
Then I had the problems described previously in this thread (not power
this time but USB is suspected problem) and now the Thermaltake won't
spin up my new HDD! No smell coming from the Thermaltake power brick.
The external enclosure sources its power from the same power strip
(with surge protection) that my HTPC does.

So what the heck is going on? Is it just coincidence? Do you think the
Thermaltake just can't handle this application. Can someone recommend
a guaranteed solution?

Frustrated,

Jonno.