Experience with Orb Drive?

[lwilliam]

Maybe I'm behind the times, but has anyone tried using the Orb drive (2.2GB for $30) for backup, archival, etc. Does it work with Retrospect?

Can you record a few tracks on it?

I just saw it in the new macwarehouse catalog that came and knew there'd be someone here who's tried it.
http://www.castlewood.com/



------------------
LW

[vici]

I have a few friends who love the ORB.

Not sure if they record to it. But it plays audio, it can be used as a boot drive, is huge (great for back-up) and rewriteable, and it's quite inexpensive.

All praises to O R B !

[doc22]

lwilliams,

The $30 media price tag is certainly attractive, but not at the expense of your sanity. They created more trouble with my PT system than anything I've ever tried. First of all, there is no FWB driver. Second, the ORB extension conflicts with the FWB extension. If you try to use them both, everything locks up to the point that to shut down the system, you sometimes have to pull the wall-plug. An absolute nightmare. Being a glutton for punishment, I've tried many configurations and it always ended up the same. I've finally realize that $1.00 CD-R is a much better alternative.

Hope this is helpful

doc22

[vici]

Like I said, ORB's are terrible.

oops

[tech_head]

Hi,

The nightmares you had with an ORB drive don't show up with my system.

I have FWB installed on all my drives and the ORB doesn't give me any problems.

For backup CD-RW is much cheaper. But if you want to off load a session and use it directly, then the ORB is great.

I have had "zero" problems.

Kent

[Noiz2]

I alsohave had great luck with the ORB drive. The firs one I had had a breakdown and Castlewood exchanged it for a new one on the spot no questions/ no problems. I use it mostly for backup during a project then archive the project when its done on CDR. This gives me realy fast backup and restore (if you need it) and uses cheap media for long term storage. I dont actualy use the ORB driver the only thig it does is open the door and eject the disk when you eject from the desktop, instead after the disk has disapeared from the desktop I push the button on the front and the disk pops out (I came from the PC world so this procedure was the norm, if you never worked on any thing other than a MAC this might bug you). I use retrospect and FWB and have had no problems at all.

------------------
SK

[doc22]

Noiz2/SK,

Thanks for the words of wisdom. Before I hook the ORB up to my studio system, I'm trying it out on the biz computer for a while. So far, so good. Seems like the secret is to keep it with the already formatted apple drives and leave off the ORB exts.

That's why I love the DUC. Soooo much good info.
---------
vici,

Nice rebound!!
------------

Too all, thanks again,

Dave

[tld]

I have no first hand experience with the ORB. I planned on getting one to use for backup for quite some time when I was first putting my system together. I followed countless usenet threads etc on them, and kept seeing real mixed opinions ranging from awesome to pure evil...so I held off.

In the mean time I had to get a CDR anyway and wound up finding that, for my purposes my Plextor 820 and retrospect express was all the backup I needed. Then again my sessions aren't that huge either. The main thing that made me stick with CDR backup is the fact that it's so reliable, and it's a real durable media for long term backups / archives.

Tom

[tld]

vici,

ever consider running for president?