[mythtv-users] Problems with External USB Drives

[Jonno]

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Jonno <jonnojohnson at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Ok I just tested the output from the Thermaltake power supply brick
and I'm getting 11V on one side (should be 12V but I figure it's fine)
but 25V on the other (instead of 5V!). I guess that could be the
issue! Seems to me these Thermaltake power supplies are junk. Guess
I'll try something else.

Jonno