Which Firewire Drive Is The Most Reliable?

[Soul For Sale]

I have owned six OWC(Other World Computing) firewire drives. Three of the six have gone bad in under two years(Power Supply related problems). Obviously, I would not buy another one of their drives! I just ordered a EZ-Quest FW800 Pro Audio Digi Approved 120 gig Drive. Other companies are out there.... Glyph.... seems to be m.i.a. I don't hear much about them anymore. Lacie seems to be popular, but I have had little experience with their products. My Question: What are you using, and have you had any problems with any brands? Thanks-Kris

[auxsend1]

I hear good things about Granite Digital. I personally have moved from OWC to WiebeTech, but I can't tell you about their reliability as I haven't used their drives very long.

[Russ M.]

Granite Digital stuff works well but quality control I fear has gone down. I've had mechanical problems with 2 products I've purchased and my son has had problems also with bad ribbon cables..

[Spiritwalkerpro]

I've been using the Lacie 120 gig firewire drives (D2 I think, the alum free standing ones) and so far so good. I'm not sure you can still get them, but on my TDM system I am able to record 16 tracks 24/96 and it didn't crap out. The only problem is once the drive becomes fragmented it can get a little troublesome. By the way, I have four of them.

[Dan Pinder]

Both Rocstor and EZquest drives have been known to have problems with their firewire connectors on the bridge board. During a project i did last year, we had 2 of each go down. Having said that, I own 3 EZ Quests and they have so far been fine. I highly recommend Granite Digital firewire cables. I've found the cable has more to do with reliability that I would have ever thought. Those generic clear-silver cladded cables you get with most drives are not of the highest quality.

[AG]

I've considered the Rocstor a godsend here in LA. After having to ship drives back to OWC and wait and wait (one time for three months), I've found the Rocstor drives, and more importantly Rocstor's tech people, to be among the best. The drives run extremely cool, the company is willing to come out and swap a bad drive the same day, and the enhanced 911 chip set, that were in the drives I bought, gave better performance compared to my OWC's.
The Rocstor's are designed for audio/video and for the first time, since I could drive to the old Micropolis plant, I don't have to buy drives that have to be shipped somewhere if there is a problem. FWIW, I've been running two Rocstor 120's for exactly a year, with heavy a/v use, and no problems.
Scott Pettigrew

[Soul For Sale]

Good point! Cables are often a forgotten variable. Thanks.-Kris

[Christoph1123]

I've heard these are good...

http://www.avammo.com/HUSH_desktop.html

Chris
www.christophercorley.com

[Electrox]

The most reliable ones are the ones you can make yourself. That way you can start identifying problems that may be occurring and fix them yourself. Go buy a solid drive (check out Western Digital, for instance, 7200 spin speed, 120GB minimum, 8 meg buffer) and firewire interface (something like this http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp...E-720F&cat=CAS
But you can find all shapes/sizes. Make sure you remove the jumper on the IDE drive so the drive acts as the Master. Hook up, screw togeth, voila! Drive assembles in 5 minutes, and at about $1 a gig, quite a bargain. (Drive $80, enclosure $43). Format drive using XP or Mac, and you're ready. If anything goes wrong, you start to learn what to look for. Good luck.