Firewire... The absolute best??

[duende]

Hi,

We've been using Firewire drives for sometime now. Usually the Lacie oxford 7200rpm 80/120 etc... We recently tried some OWC IBM drives, and had three out of four go down because of faulty IBM drives. I'm weary of going back to the Lacie, as they have no fan, and I'm not real confident about their auto on/off switches. But what else is there??? I'm not real thrilled about paying $500 plus for a digi drive. I've heard of a PNCengineering drive that had an 8mb cache instead of the standard 2mb, but I was wondering if anyone else has tried these, or has any other suggestions.

Thanks

Alex

[dave-G]

Alex. ... stranger ....

I've got a bunch of the OWC's around, and have had nothing but joy with them. That said, you might also check out Granite Digital

and by the way... you're going to be "uncle" Alex in June [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] ... (Juice says hi)

-dave

[duende]

Dave,

Email me!!!! ([email protected]) I've been wondering how to get ahold of you for sometime now. Everyone else is curious how you're doing too!! Tell Joyce I said hello. Sounds like you stopped wearing such tight pants. Congrats!!!

You like the OWC's huh?? I'm really in a strange situation as I'm aware that they come with the IBM 180GXP's installed, which supposedly are the best performing drives in Fw cases, but three drives going down in the last two months is no joke. I'm paying the rent for Lazarus Data Recovery these days.. By the way they are the coolest. I saw the Granite, have you used them??? Do you like the one fan or two fan model, and how noisy are they.

Email me!!!!

Alex

[doug_hti]

Cobra EZ Quest, oxford 911, ibm drives (usually)
support is great as well as I think the 3 year warranty

[Allan Speers]

Granite Digital enclosure,
WD special-edition ATA's with the 8 meg buffer.
Stock Apple 9.2 driver.

That's as good as it gets. End of story.

[Lee Blaske]

Granite Digital enclosure,
WD special-edition ATA's with the 8 meg buffer.
Stock Apple 9.2 driver.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Seconded.

I've also found that the WD1200JB is slightly faster than the WD800JB. Not enough, probably, to make a difference if you only need 80 GB, but if it was a toss up, go with the 120 GB.

It doesn't surprise me that the IBM's failed in the fanless OWC case. They run a bit hotter than the WD's. With the exception of the DigiDrive, professional drives are usually not built for silence. They're built for reliability under heavy use, and usually destined for machine rooms.

As was mentioned in a previous post, IBM is getting out of the hard drive business and farming out the manufacturing to Hitachi.

Lee Blaske

[duende]

Originally posted by speer:
Granite Digital enclosure,
WD special-edition ATA's with the 8 meg buffer.
Stock Apple 9.2 driver.

That's as good as it gets. End of story.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Speer,

Thanks for the info... which granite enclosure are you using, and how do you like the construction.

Alex

[B-Grade]

Is the Alex "Duende" like 1/2 of the guitar playing duo from NYC?

[bobbyc]

We have the 2 bay hotswap firewire system from Granite Digital. It's definitely machine room gear (about the same amount of noise as my mirrored "wind tunnel" G4). The chassis has a fan for the power supply and each removable tray has it's own drive fan - everything runs cool though. The trays are plastic and don't provide a good way to label so you can identify them when inserted in chassis - but they have been holding up well. The high priced special firewire cable I purchased from Granite was a piece of work. Once I figured out what the problem was everything has been great. I buy several empty trays at a time and everytime I find an WD80GB w/8Meg buffer on sale, I load up another tray. These are really responsive drives and have been rock solid for me. All the manufacturers seem to be moving to a 1 year warranty these days.

[Allan Speers]

Alex,

Bobby beat me to it. I have the same system, and his comments are excellent.