[jyl]

I have the drives running 24/7. When they used to sleep, iTunes and iPhoto couldn't find their libraries, and Time Capsule couldn't find its backup disk. I don't know if unchecking the "sleep" option was the best solution but it worked.

Can't install drive internally, this is a Mac mini, no spare bays.

Red, is there a RAID solution you recommend? I only need 1TB. Ideally a USB 3.0 as it doesn't need to be networked, it will be direct attached to the Mac. I'd like my data to survive two drive failures.

The failed drive spins but the Mac says it cannot read the drive.

Currently I have the Mac mini and the libraries live on an external drive (the one that failed). Another external drive backs up the Mac's internal boot drive and the library drive using Time Capsule. The boot and library drives are also cloned to another partition of the backup drive weekly. Finally, every now and then I manually copy the libraries over to an offsite drive that I keep in the garage. This is tedious. I'd like a transparent scheme.